If you’ve ever wondered what a 2,000 year old computer looks like, then just click on this video, to see a working model of the fascinating Antikythera mechanism.
This amazing device contains some three-dozen intricate gear wheels, with drive wheels, and differential and epi-cyclic gearing — yet it was made in the first century BC and not matched in terms of sophistication until the 1700s.
Built by the ancient Greeks, it can compute eclipses, planetary motion, calendars, and even the dates for Olympic games. A multipurpose 2,000 year old computer.
No one knew until recently that the ancient Greeks were capable of building something so mechanically advanced. Clearly the knowledge and technology for this somehow came to be lost, until the corroded and rotting remains of this mechanism were found in a shipwreck in 1900.
You’ll find lots of information about the Antikythera device online now, thanks to some intensive high-tech research in recent years.
I can also highly recommend a new book about it and the many attempts to unravel its functions — Decoding the Heavens, by a New Scientist writer, Jo Marchant — which I reviewed here for The Irish Times. If you liked Longitude, then I think you’ll enjoy this book.
One of the many characters in this story is former British Museum curator, Michael Wright, who made the mechanism his life’s work, and now has successfully build the first working model.
