More Uses Deduced for Antikythera

Scientists keep edging closer to determining the who, what and why of the Antikythera Mechanism recovered from an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901.

So far, we know the strange, complex assembly of bronze gears could accurately predict lunar and solar eclipses and tell the positions of planets throughout the solar system.

According to the New York Times:

Now a new analysis of the dial used to predict eclipses, which is set on the back of the mechanism, provides yet another clue to one of history’s most intriguing puzzles. 

Christián C. Carman, a science historian at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina, and James Evans, a physicist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington, suggest that the calendar of the mysterious device began in 205 B.C., just seven years after Archimedes died.  The mechanism was most likely housed in a wooden box and operated by a hand crank. The device itself bears inscriptions on the front and back. In the 1970s, the engravings were estimated to date from 87 B.C. But more recently, scientists examining the forms of the Greek letters in the inscriptions dated the mechanism to 150 to 100 B.C. 

Over the years scientists have speculated that the mechanism might have been somehow linked to Archimedes, one of history’s most famous mathematicians and inventors. In 2008, a group of researchers reported that language inscribed on the device suggested it had been manufactured in Corinth or in Syracuse, where Archimedes lived.

Click here to read the article.

Add a Century to Antikythera's Age

This 1-minute new animation by Italian astronomer Mogi Vicentini brilliantly demonstrates the inner workings of the Antikythera.

The ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism ~ often considered the world’s earliest known computer ~ now appears to be even older than previously thought. According to Jo Marchant, author of Decoding the Heavens, writing in New Scientist magazine:

This mysterious box of tricks was a portable clockwork computer, dating from the first or second century BC. Operated by turning a handle on the side, it modelled the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets through the sky, sported a local calendar, star calendar and Moon-phase display, and could even predict eclipses and track the timing of the Olympic games.

I gave a talk on the device at London's Royal Institution last night. One new clue I mentioned to the origin of the mechanism comes from the Olympiad dial ~ there are six sets of games named on the dial, five of which have been deciphered so far. Four of them, including the Olympics, were major games known across the Greek world. But the fifth, Naa, was much smaller, and would only have been of local interest.

The Naa games were held in Dodona in northwestern Greece, so Alexander Jones of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York has suggested that the mechanism must have been made by or for someone from that area.

Intriguingly, this could mean the device is even older than thought. The inscriptions have been dated to around 100 BC, but according to Jones the device may have been made at latest in the early second century BC, because after that the Romans devastated or took over the Greek colonies in the region, so it's unlikely that people would still have been using the Greek calendar there.

Click here for the complete New Scientist article.

Ancient Antikythera 'Computer' Reconstructed

The story is told of how the author Cicero in the first century BC first examined the legendary Antikythera invented by Archimedes. The Roman wrote:

The invention of Archimedes deserves special admiration because he had thought out a way to represent accurately by a single device for turning the globe those various and divergent movements with their different rates of speed. The moon was always as many revolutions behind the sun on the bronze contrivance as would agree with the number of days it was behind it in the sky.

A device of this nature was hauled from the sea about a century ago and finally has been mechanically deciphered. It is a surprisingly sophisticated device capable of accomplishing the very actions Cicero described.

Check out the video above of the reconstruction of the Antikythera, 

then click here for the fascinating new article in New Scientist online.