Clickspring a YouTuber is building an Antikythera mechanism from scratch, amazing engineering and eell worth watching his series of videos.
Boffins revisit the Antikythera Mechanism and assert it’s no longer Greek to them
Academics from University College London and The Cyprus Institute assert that they’ve built the most accurate model of the Antikythera Mechanism, the one-of-a-kind ancient Greek machine made of meshed gears. The Mechanism’s back story is worthy of myth: it was found in the year 1900, amidst a wreck thought to have gone down 2, …
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Monday 15th March 2021 07:31 GMT Sorry that handle is already taken.
He's also contributed some research of his own which is nice
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Monday 15th March 2021 08:01 GMT John Sager
Boffinry at its best
The paper is well worth reading, plus the supplementary info. The CGI videos in the latter are fascinating. It would take a talented clockmaker these days to build one, and the team propose to do just that using methods from those times. I will be very interested to see the result.
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Monday 15th March 2021 08:49 GMT Andy The Hat
For those who are interested in such mechanisms
there's a book by Seb Falk called "The Light Ages" which is primarily built around the 1000AD onwards development of the "successors" to this device from the Armillary Sphere and its 2 dimensional form, the Astrolabe, to the Albion and Equatorie. Considering they were still using an Earth-centric model and epicycles, the accuracy was astounding.
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Monday 15th March 2021 09:24 GMT Mage
Re: Considering they were still using an Earth-centric model
Even if you suspected or proved a sun-centric solar system a clever box to show planets and moon as they are visible from earth or on a ship, would very likely put the Earth in the middle in an Earth-centric style. Star and planet computer simulators today start with an Earth based view.
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Monday 15th March 2021 12:37 GMT Andy The Hat
Re: Considering they were still using an Earth-centric model
If you are only looking at the position of one or two objects that's fine and worked for location as they don't take into account true motion of objects. As soon as you turn this on its head and start using the machine to predict the full motions of the heavens including eclipses, retrograde motions, all the main stars and the positions of the entire zodiac from your location at any set time and date things become really difficult (hence the epicycles and epicycles of epicycles). One ring of the Equatorie required 365 location holes drilled but technology meant the builder only managed about 30 (if memory serves) as he could not physically drill smaller than a needle ... this is on a device that's planned to be the size of a cartwheel and accurate for 44,000 years.
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Tuesday 16th March 2021 21:49 GMT RLWatkins
Re: For those who are interested in such mechanisms
Piling on epicycles to duplicate complex curves is, mathematically, similar to using Fourier to fit a collection of sine curves to a function.
I've seen epicycle demos which, with increasing accuracy, duplicated what looked like closed Hilburt curves. Didn't look like much until you got five or six epicycles, but with enough of them the results were pretty surprising.
One shouldn't wonder that some ancient mathematically oriented tinkerer might stumble across the principle.
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Monday 15th March 2021 11:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hopefully Janina Ramirez will do something about it
The BBC did a programme about it some years ago. Maybe this one:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hlkcq
If it's the one I remember, it was fascinating. One key point was that none of the parts showed any evidence of re-working, to modify it or fix errors. So the mechanism wasn't a prototype, and all of the key elements of the mechanism (they emphasized the "pin-and-slot" drives used to reproduce the effects of elliptical motion) must have been well-known to the designers. Which further implies that somewhere there was a precision engineering workshop capable of making things like it to order.
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Monday 15th March 2021 12:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hopefully Janina Ramirez will do something about it
Sorry - missed the editing window. The old BBC programme featured the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project of which Tony Freeth (first author of the paper) is/was a part. It also featured the parallel work of Michael Wright (formerly curator of Mechanical Engineering at the Science Museum), who had built his own reconstruction of the Mechanism.
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Monday 15th March 2021 10:07 GMT Sgt_Oddball
Re: Marooned
The thing about GPS is, it tells you where you are, Not what's happening around you.
It's got something to do with translating a static 2D representation of an area at some historic point in time, into a real-time 3D model complete with dynamic environmental changes.
The issue being something along the lines of 'a map cannot tell you the weather'.
(yes we have weather maps, but those are not static, nor created by cartographers).
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Monday 15th March 2021 18:35 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: Marooned
There was a European captain of a sailing ship in the Pacific who lost his compass, and had to admit to his hired, Polynesian crew that he was lost and could not navigate them to the destination, or any other island. They asked him where they were going, he told them and the crew set off.
A few days later they arrived precisely at the island destination. The European was amazed. "How did you know where it was?" The crew were confused "It's always been there."
They knew how to navigate by the waves in the sea, the birds and clouds in the air, local currents and all manner of 'non technological' means. They still learn this today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
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Monday 15th March 2021 11:52 GMT TeeCee
"...and the Olympiad cycle.”
I still reckon the most convincing theory I've heard is that it's a sporting almanac.
The ancients were not aliens and to this day, if you want to see really stupid amounts of money being chucked down the plughole by the wealthy, look no further than sports and the betting thereon.
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Monday 15th March 2021 19:26 GMT jake
Re: "...and the Olympiad cycle.”
Its the poor who are really stupid, throwing away what little money they have on sporting events ... and the wealthy encourage it, to help maintain the status quo.
iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses.
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Monday 15th March 2021 14:14 GMT ThatOne
I wondered too when I read the article, thinking at first "Greek" referred to the mechanism's origin (and they had found a sticker "Made in Taiwan" on the back). But after reading I realized it must be a misleading attempt at a pun ("Greek" as in "incomprehensible").
(Didn't downvote you though.)
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Monday 15th March 2021 14:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
What does "Greek" mean?
The construction dates mentioned are in the range of roughly 200-60BC, so are post-Alexander. This certainly allows for an origin outside modern Greece (and for Persian/Indian-origin skills to have been involved in manufacture). But it ignores the evidence that all the writing on it is in Greek, and one of the functions is to track the various Greek games. So it was made for (someone in) the Greek-speaking-and-Greek-culture area of the eastern Mediterranean. In the absence of non-Greek items showing similar workmanship from the same time period, it's therefore logical to assume that the workshop was in the same area, even if it's not a certainty (and if other items do turn up, then the history books get re-written again).
And I'm surprised to hear that Greeks didn't have lathes. They had potter's wheels. Musical pipes were commonplace too, implying woodworking lathes. (And that's just from my limited knowledge of the time - corrections welcome).
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Monday 15th March 2021 16:38 GMT Grikath
ummm...
You don't need a lathe to make the concentric shafts. There's several methods to do this, none requiring a lathe of any kind. Them greeks knew how to Bronze, y'know...
Oh, and the ancient egyptians already had lathes, notably the bow-type and the spring type for wood and stone work. So I think the greeks of the 1st c. BC may just have had a clue about them after a couple of centuries of trade and war and stuff.
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Monday 15th March 2021 13:19 GMT JacobZ
Where are the others?
It seems enormously unlikely that something like this exists in isolation, if only because the skills and techniques had to be developed through simpler predecessors. Even Babbage's Difference Engine, huge advance that it was, did not appear out of thin air, and it had a number of successors.
Were they just very few of these? Were they not preserved well?
Or are there other examples that have just been missed, mistaken for lumps of mud and rock?
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Monday 15th March 2021 14:04 GMT -tim
Re: Where are the others?
Any earlier examples would have been turned into something else after they were no longer repairable. Anything broken thing made of metal would have found its way into the hands of a recycler if there was anyway to get it there. I think a survey of jewelry possibly made of gears would be an interesting thing to look at since there are mentions of other complex devices and turning a broken gear into a relatively shiny bit of ornamentation would have been an easy task.
The study of Ancient Egypt mentions devices made of wood including devices used to lift large stones yet no examples have been found but in a place where firewood was hard to get, any broken wooden device would be building material or firewood very quickly.
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Monday 15th March 2021 21:10 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: Where are the others?
When the Romans sacked the greek town of Corinth, the place burnt with such ferocity that the fire melted not only the large amount of bronze, but also the gold and silver which ran in the gutters and mixed. Items made of 'Corinthian Bronze' were highly prized for their gold and silver content.
Had the Corinthians owned an example of this mechanism, it would not have survived the fire.
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Monday 15th March 2021 14:28 GMT Steve K
Re: Where are the others?
Due to an administrative oversight, the AntiKythera mechanism was being transported on the same ship as the Kythera mechanism.
Dues to rough weather at sea, the 2 devices came within close proximity and the rest is history. Due to sea symmetry violation, only fragments of the AntiKythera mechanism survived.
Or something
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Monday 15th March 2021 14:38 GMT ThatOne
Re: Where are the others?
> Were they just very few of these?
Definitely. It's a terribly complicated device, hand-made to order, and must have cost a fortune, so I guess there were never more than a dozen made, it at all. There is a distinct possibility it was an unique object built for somebody.
If they knew how to do gears, why wouldn't there be a lot of simpler mechanisms like clocks and stuff? I think people at that time simply didn't realize the potential. After all they had also invented a kind of steam engine and didn't try to put it to any use either: Too soon, both were solutions to problems which hadn't yet cropped up (precise clocks were required for ocean navigation, steam for mines and large scale industry).
Besides, even if there were more geared devices, they are quite fragile and this one only survived because it was dug in marine sediment and left alone for millennia. Those on dry land would suffer much more damage and their pieces would had been recycled, or at least dispersed and deformed beyond recognition in the following 20 centuries.
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Monday 15th March 2021 18:23 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Where are the others?
After all they had also invented a kind of steam engine and didn't try to put it to any use either: Too soon, both were solutions to problems which hadn't yet cropped up (precise clocks were required for ocean navigation, steam for mines and large scale industry).
ISTR there was a Greek temple that had a pair of doors opening by way of water being boiled in underfloor cylinders, and closing when it cooled again. Which was probably done for the magikxz, not because it somehow was easier. Might have been just a construction drawing though, by one of the contemporary επιστήμονες (boffins).
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Tuesday 16th March 2021 13:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Where are the others?
> If they knew how to do gears, why wouldn't there be a lot of simpler mechanisms like clocks and stuff?
I wondered that and, notwithstanding the cost aspect of bronze being expensive, I suggest the answer is that they simply had no need of timekeeping. On land activities were driven by the seasons and daylight hours. Maritime activities (even assuming a spring drive could have been manufactured to make a portable clock) were limited to the Mediterranean, coastal Africa and coastal Europe: in other words not far enough away from land for long enough to need a longitude.
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Monday 15th March 2021 14:28 GMT muuser
Analogue or digital
The mechanism is being referred to as the first analogue computer in the main stream press. I would have thought a meshed gear device would be digital. Even an abacus is digital, in both senses, and Turing complete, and older than the Antikythera Mechanism. Mind you, what an astonishing bit of reverse engineering.
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Monday 15th March 2021 15:12 GMT steelpillow
Prime science
The Antikythera mechanism was indeed a computer, in the same sense that a mechanical "computing gunsight" of WWII was a computer: you adjusted the settings and it churned out the answer. It simulated the standard cosmological model of the day. Astronomers had tracked the major objects in the sky and tried to develop theories to explain their observations. They had no numerical notation, beyond borrowing letters of the alphabet, and found multiplication extremely hard without an abacus. Nevertheless prime numbers, and specifically ratios of prime numbers, were found to closely model the relationships between orbital periods and the like. As the theory advanced, higher primes and epicycles led to ever-more-accurate models. This highly scientific state-of-the-art cosmological model has become known as the Ptolemaic Universe and foolishly written off by unscientific chauvinists of the modern age.
The Antikythera mechanism was the state-of-the-art supercomputer of its day and simulated the Universe to the limits of measurement accuracy. To advance their theory they didn't discover ever-higher-energy particles, just ever-larger prime numbers. One of these gears has 227 teeth, FFS! Imagine figuring out that is a prime using only Roman numerals and an abacus! Those Greeks were top-notch theoretical physicists. Archimedes is known to have had a similar example, which seems to have been lost on a sea voyage around the same time, and it is conceivable that this one was actually his.
But the Greeks were not only as scientific but also as much woo merchants as our modern cosmologists are, despite plugging rather fewer arbitrary numbers into their model than we do. Prime numbers became sacrosanct and to suggest that numbers such as pi or root 2 might be irrational was heresy to many ears. Not, as so often claimed, because the Greeks were primitive, but for broadly the same reasons that the mainstream Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is paraphrased as "shut up and calculate"; in other words, "go hunt out new primes and don't come back until you have found one". Yet the woo did seep in; this priceless object was built for one purpose and one purpose only, to predict the most auspicious date for the next Olympic Games.
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Monday 15th March 2021 19:38 GMT jake
Re: Prime science
"One of these gears has 227 teeth, FFS! Imagine figuring out that is a prime using only Roman numerals and an abacus!"
My Daughter figured that out in her head when she was about 7 years old. So did my grand daughter. I hardly think that the mathematicians of the Classical Era would have found it to be as difficult as you portray.
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Tuesday 16th March 2021 13:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Prime science
> One of these gears has 227 teeth, FFS! Imagine figuring out that is a prime using only Roman numerals and an abacus!
Using only Roman numerals [1] would be a challenge but, fortunately, setting out a Sieve of Eratosthenes on a piece of land would only require 227 marks in the ground.
[1] Roman numerals were used for recording amounts as they are easy to scratch or emboss. Actual calculations were done using something akin to an abacus.
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Tuesday 16th March 2021 16:35 GMT ThatOne
Re: Prime science
> this priceless object was built for one purpose and one purpose only, to predict the most auspicious date for the next Olympic Games.
This priceless object had probably one purpose only, impress the Joneses.
I mean scientists of that time would be satisfied with a sheet of papyrus detailing the data and formulas (and could most certainly not afford more), and the incredibly rich person who ordered that device to be made had most likely only a vague notion of what it was calculating. But it definitely looked great on his mantelpiece, and was a great conversation starter...
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Monday 15th March 2021 17:27 GMT Keith Oborn
Must look at this
I went to a talk organised by the Computer Conservation Society a few years back, and got a copy of "Decoding The Heavens". There was an excellent exploded view reconstruction by Michael Wright done as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqhuAnySPZ0
What is interesting in the book also is the saga of multiple attempts to work out the structure over the decades, fallings out, refusing to hand materials over, and so on.
I think Arthur Clarke observed: "This is at least as complex as a 16th century clock. If the Romans hadn't shut down the great Rhodes school and the rest of Greek theoretical science, the Greeks could have reached the moon by about 300AD"
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Tuesday 16th March 2021 17:03 GMT Grikath
Re: Must look at this
Well.. the monks that got plundered did write the commonly taught History, while at the same time a different branch tried to Convert the "damned heathens"...
On the other hand, the Danes/Russ/Swedes/northern Slavs(!) didn't go in for Writing Complaints Down much. If it wasn't worth being sung by a Skald, or entrusted to Runes, it wasn't worth mentioning..
So the primary sources we have just might be a tad biased, and not wholly represent the opinion of the Vikingr themselves.
Icon because..
Besides... Those complaining monks were officially Ascetics.. They didn't have any use for all that gold and posessions anyway. Hypocritical bastards..
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