Metal scraps said to be computing device

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/...cient_computer

Well they discovered a "computer" in southern Greece. Your thoughts?

[CrossLOPER]

That was the Antikathera clock, and it was found a century ago amongst a culture-rich ship wreck. It was identifed as a clock in 2003, I believe.

[Adrian II]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/...cient_computer

Well they discovered a "computer" in southern Greece. Your thoughts?

That this is old news, though still fascinating. Dating from the first century b.C. the mechanism seems to have been as detailed and accurate as an eighteenth century astronomical clock.

[Aenlic]

It's been on TV multiple times. Most recently it featured prominently in the Greeks episode of Terry Jones' Barbarians series.

[Marshal Murat]

Oh yea, old news. The title really takes away from the invention.

[BigTex]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/...cient_computer

Well they discovered a "computer" in southern Greece. Your thoughts?

Indeed old news. There's many more, more complex devices they've discovered also. Yes it is also a computer, crude and non electrical, but so were the ones that came out during hte 1800's. Makes you wonder what was lost when the library of Alexandria was destroyed. Some scientists put the amount of years that destruction set us back at, nearly at 2000 years.

[Aenlic]

Not just when the library at Alexandria burned, either.

The floor of the Mediterranean must be littered with sunken ships containing all manner of things. At least one of Geiseric's ships containing the Vandal plunder of Rome in 455 sank on the way back to the capital at Saldae. Supposedly the treasure he plundered included some of the treasure from the Roman sack of the Temple in Jerusalem. No one knows what was on the ship which sank, just that one or more of the ships loaded with treasure did sink somewhere between Rome and Saldae.

[BDC]

Damn those Romans...

Greeks can't have been too far away from an industrial revolution (of sorts) with this tech. Old news though.

[Watchman]

Toys. Fancy prestige toys is what those were. The Greeks (or Hellenics anyway) were aware of the basic principle of the damn steam engine, and did they ever even try to use it for anything pragmatic ?
Nope.

The Romans at least made some practical use of applied hydraulics.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure a complicated clockwork device that only shows the regular rotation of celestial objects does not fulfill the criteria of "computer", even early mechanical one. It can only do one single thing, after all; if it qualified, so would everything from the first primitive clocks Medieval monks developed to keep track of prayer hours (this is where ours come from) to the fancy mechanical toys excessively rich and powerful rulers liked to have around to impress visitors.

Computers may be serious idiot savants at the core, but at least they're a bit more versatile in their function.

[Kralizec]

The Greeks (or Hellenics anyway) were aware of the basic principle of the damn steam engine, and did they ever even try to use it for anything pragmatic ?

Yup, the Hellenes at Alexandria even constructed one, albeit primitive. But the right conditions for a full blown industrial revolution just weren't there. Slave/serf labour is damn cheap, afterall.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Before you learn how to make steam engines work properly you have to bore cannon.

[Watchman]

I'm pretty sure the monetary economy just plain wasn't up to snuff either. Recall that when the European industrial revolution finally started in early 1800s it was preceded by some five hundred years of continuous developement in the field of international banking and credits systems...

A single major campaign tended to empty the coffers of even great empires, painstakingly filled over decades of careful management. The means to amass and invest sufficient raw capital in burgeoning industry and technology... just weren't there yet.

Plus, as far as steam power goes the Mediterranean probably wouldn't have been able to make use of it too much anyway. Not enough fuel to go around. Granted, the situation wasn't as bad as it would be by Late Middle Ages, but by all accounts one of the constant problems around the inland sea was rank shortage of just about everything, starting with elementaries like food and and water and proceeding to raw materials.

[Aenlic]

Toys. Fancy prestige toys is what those were. The Greeks (or Hellenics anyway) were aware of the basic principle of the damn steam engine, and did they ever even try to use it for anything pragmatic ?
Nope.

The Romans at least made some practical use of applied hydraulics.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure a complicated clockwork device that only shows the regular rotation of celestial objects does not fulfill the criteria of "computer", even early mechanical one. It can only do one single thing, after all; if it qualified, so would everything from the first primitive clocks Medieval monks developed to keep track of prayer hours (this is where ours come from) to the fancy mechanical toys excessively rich and powerful rulers liked to have around to impress visitors.

Computers may be serious idiot savants at the core, but at least they're a bit more versatile in their function.

That's a valid point, Watchman, about applied use.

But you're wrong about the computer bit. The Antikithera device doesn't just show the regular rotation of celestial objects. It shows the positions of celestial objects as viewed from Earth. Such motion is in no way simple. The Moon displays a regular motion because it orbits the Earth. The Sun displays regular motion because the Earth orbits it. But the planets, the ones known at the time, display non-regular motion. This is because they orbit the Sun at differing velocities and at different distances. So at times the planets appear to move backwards in the sky. The mathematics of that are extremely complicated. Orbital mechanics isn't for the faint of heart. Aside from that, the Antikithera device can also add, subtract, multiply and divide. That makes it a computer, albeit an analog one.

[Watchman]

The somewhat peculiar planetary movement patterns (like that retrograde "dip" Mars does that gave a certain Ptolemy so much trouble) are, nonetheless, regular. Factoring them in adds an extra n of complexity to the gear-work, but so long as you have a sufficiently good model of the movement patterns and the math to get the gears right it's doable.

And the result's still a clockwork that only repeats a certain sequance, no matter how complicated.

The Antikhytera thingamabob's ability to act as a calculator is a bit news to me though. I thought there was rather little left of the thing to begin with - sure that's not the sort of theoretical hyperbole people at times fall foul of with these kinds of things ?

[Aenlic]

The somewhat peculiar planetary movement patterns (like that retrograde "dip" Mars does that gave a certain Ptolemy so much trouble) are, nonetheless, regular. Factoring them in adds an extra n of complexity to the gear-work, but so long as you have a sufficiently good model of the movement patterns and the math to get the gears right it's doable.

And the result's still a clockwork that only repeats a certain sequance, no matter how complicated.

The Antikhytera thingamabob's ability to act as a calculator is a bit news to me though. I thought there was rather little left of the thing to begin with - sure that's not the sort of theoretical hyperbole people at times fall foul of with these kinds of things ?

It has to act as a calculator, Watchman, just to handle the math involved in showing the relative motions of the planets; but it doesn't just follow the motions of celestial bodies in orbits. It also calculates the Saros and Callipic cycles.

All it does, mechanically, is replicate the math involved. It adds, subtracts, divides and multiplies. This is all that a computer does. It's an analog computer designed for a specific set of functions; but it does compute. A digital computer does no more than that. A digital computer merely adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides binary digits. The function to which the result is then put varies. The computer you have on your desk as you read this is one function. But if you're wearing a digital watch, then you're also wearing a digital computer which performs those basic mathematical functions on binary digits with the sole function of telling time.

Because it is manually analog rather than digital, the Antikithera device isn't as fast as your digital watch and can't determine the miniscule movements of minutes and seconds and hours; but it can, rather accurately, determine the solar year and the lunar year and even reconcile the two in the Saros cycle.

[Kralizec]

Before you learn how to make steam engines work properly you have to bore cannon.

The Ptolemaioi's chief sources of income were agriculture products (wich the Egyptian serfs could cheaply provide) and being a transition point for trade with the far east. They just had no incentive to create something that could supplant physical labour to a large degree.
Conversely the British had a huge empire wich encompassed the globe and therefore plenty of places to sell their excess production at extremely profitable prices.
Of course by that time metallurgy had improved greatly, but I still think the Hellenes were crafty to come up with some practical application of steam power.

[Watchman]

Something just doesn't click right here now. There's a fair lot of mathematics embedded in the gear system of all clockworks by default, that's how example mechanical clocks manage the 24 hours à 60 minuts à 60 seconds division. Add some more precise mathematics and additional machinery, and you get a machine that covers the dates of all the lunar months accurately too. Still more, and the leap year is taken into account. Or summer and winter solstice. The amount of additional topics the machinery can covery is in principle unlimited, and so long as considerations of volume and power source permit you can right well add the damn star chart and all the objects of the solar system if you're willing to put in some pretty convoluted calculations and a lot of gears and switches. You'll need pretty accurate calculations of the celestial movements of course, but then again those were established pretty long ago and are just more math when it comes down to it.

Most mechanical chronographs intented to be worn on the wrist content themselves with the date, leap year and phases of the moon tops though. Size limit, you know.

But so far as I know there's no particular other reason why they couldn't cover everything the Antikythera machine does without becoming any less chronographs and any more analog computers.

That's the thing. A clock, when it comes down to it, only does a single, precise mathematical equation embedded into the number of teeth in its gears, their numbers relative to each other, and whatever other mechanical levers and switches have been added to the system to add functions. And that's not a calculator. A calculator, although basically similar in its mechanics, takes variable input, processes it through its machinery, and displays output produced by the mathematical rules embedded in its internal architecture.

Now, if the Antithingamabob had a system for accepting variable input (say, X + VII - III) and processing it to displayable output (= XIV) according to accepted mathematical formulas, that would be a calculator. But astronomy pretty much by default is not that variable; just about all the parts of it readily observable and of real importance to humans (or premodern ones anyway) are essentially cyclical. They repeat themselves over and over, and while there are certain odd aberrations, those are cyclical too - think lunar and solar eclipses. Those are not exactly a part of what might be considered the normal celestial rotation, but if you have good observation data to work on and sophisticated enough math to do the necessary calculations you can compute the patterns and, if you so choose, embed into the gears of a clockwork. Ditto for any cyclical and observable astronomical phenomenom.

And so far as I've ever been told about it, the ancient machine sits quite solidly in the latter category. It's pretty much a chronograph - and not a half bad one at that, it must be added - but not an analog computer or calculator, else what they taught me to work with back in watchmaker school weren't clocks and watches but computers in disguise...

[Papewaio]

Apparently the differential gears (which were supposed to be invented first in the 16th century) which takes it from being just an orrery to being also a calculator in finding angular velocities.

[Aenlic]

Hmm, I think you need to look more into the Antikythera device, Watchman. You've assumed it is just a chronograph which stolidly keeps track of time and the movement of celestial bodies. This isn't the case. The device is intended to accept input via the operator and then return a result. The operator sets the date and the device computes, using analog gears rather than digital electronics, a result which shows various things: the lunar cycle on that date, the solar cycle, the positions of the various planets in the sky and several other things. This is, by definition, the very essence of a computer - analog or digital. The fact that the Antikythera device uses gears to achieve what a digital computer does with electrons and binary manipulations doesn't detract from what it achieves. It accepts input and returns a result which would take many hours of mathematical work by hand. Same as any computer.

There's an article in The Economist about it, entitled appropriately enough for this discussion, The Clockwork Computer.

There's a wonderful article about it in the online version of Nature, called In Search of Lost Time.

And, of course, there is the actual research itself, represented on the web pages of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project in Greece.

[CrossLOPER]

Before you learn how to make steam engines work properly you have to bore cannon.

You also have to advance to the Industrial Age and research foundary.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Actually cannon are pre-industrial. The reason the British had such a jump on everyone else in steam power was because Watt worked out that you could use the same machine the navy used to bore cannon to bore the cylinders for his engine. Before that too much steam escaped and the wastage made the machine nothing more than a novelty.

Had the Romans had gunpowder they probably would have had steam, and we'd be in another galaxey by now.

[CrossLOPER]

Actually cannon are pre-industrial.

Where did I suggest I believe otherwise?

It's a joke anyway, yo.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I know, I was being pedantic.

[Aenlic]

I know, I was being pedantic.

Stop that! I have an exclusivity clause in my pedantry, pedagoguery and general pissantness contract! I'll sue.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Stop that! I have an exclusivity clause in my pedantry, pedagoguery and general pissantness contract! I'll sue.

'elp! 'e's repressin' me!

Seriously though, the Greek computer is very cool. I wonder how hard it was to make.

[Watchman]

...bugger.

Okay, so it's an early analog computer.
*sulk*
I'll still maintain that it was really just a really complicated, expensive toy though - that the technology was apparently simply forgotten after a while rather suggests nobody came up with any particularly practical use for it.

[CrossLOPER]

OK, it's a really awesome ancient clock/astronomical device, that is established. Tell me, however, why this thread, that under normal circumstances such as the ones that are present right now would not cause any problems or controversy, deserves to be in the back room?

[Fragony]

Time will tell.

[Watchman]

...a wizard did it ?