A new working model of the mysterious 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers.The new model was demonstrated by its creator, former museum curator Michael Wright, who had created an earlier model based on decades of study. He demonstrates how the more complete device works in a video originally created on the New Scientist Website.
Video
h/t Charles MacDonald
They should hook the thing up to the Large Hadron Collider and see what happens.
I saw this on Eurekalert, its frickin' cool eh? It seems the Greeks had some really good metallurgists and machinists. According to the article, the machine was the equal of Middle Ages European clocks for precision metalwork.
Raises the question why the Greeks didn't have an Industrial Revolution way back when, doesn't it? Makes you wonder what the secret ingredient is.
On the subject of precision machines of ancient times, I must recommend a little book called One Good Turn.
amazon.com/One-Good-Turn-Natural-Screwdriver/dp/0684867303
First best seller by a Canadian author I've read and enjoyed for ages.
You folks across western Canada will get a kick out of this -- apparently there is some wacky theory that the earth is warming up and (excuse me, I can't go on, laughing too hard) ...
I used one of these when I first started surveying. Had to carry it into the bush, along with my transit, my ox-head, my chain, and my snowshoes. I was stronger then. My thighs were the same size as my waist. The bears hibernated with one eye open. The moose put the rut on hold when they smelled my crew. We burned our sketches onto deer hide. We taught wolves how to fetch ptarmigans. You'll never see the likes of me again.
Fascinating read. Wonder why the blue prints for this didn't survive elsewhere, in part, even.
Not discovered yet, or long ago destroyed?
Likely far too advanced for the majority or the ruling class of the day then to recognize it's spectacular achievement.
http://www.vcalc.net/cu.htm
Check that out. If the link doesn't work, google "curta calculator". These were actually obsolete when I first started surveying, but I played with my older brother's when I was a kid. They cost $300 in 1970. My first car cost about that much.
It was a totally mechanical operation, and cut calculating times way down. You had to turn the little crank, and multiplying 6 digit numbers took a lot of turns. Between that and sharpening pencils, we had very strong forearms.
The secret to the industrial revolution?
Well-developed agricultural base.
Well-developed trade system.
Relatively high literacy rate (you can thank the Anglican church for this one)
Another big one is developmental synchronicity. If one place builds something, the knowledge to do so may be lost. As important, high literacy rate, especially relatively egalitarian systems of education, allows for inventors to share ideas. That the industrial revolution happened in Europe, and esp. in Britain, at the time it did, had much more to do with a combination of such factors working together. Not the least of which was that Britain was a hub of trade and had markets for almost anything it made.
What I find weird is that one of the first comments blames religion, and specifically Christianity, on this never having been developed further. Ignorance of history is bliss, ain't it?
There were a couple of practical reasons why the ancients were so interested in mapping the movements of sun and planets. Developing reliable calendars may have been important for agriculture, i.e. making sure you don't miss the narrow window for planting between the wet and dry seasons, or the first and last frost.
A second important use of celestial measurements may have been related to navigation. Remember, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not have a compass. All their navigation depended on the stars. (If you read ancient texts of sea-faring, like the Odyssey of Homer, you realize this is why they are always describing long voyages as setting off after sun down.)
Too often when we study ancient peoples, we assume that they were not as smart or advanced as we are. We tend to think for instance, that if the ancients did not do certain technological things, it was because they could not do them. But that is not the case. They were as intelligent and observant as we are, and had most of the tools necessary to unlock nature's secrets.
But a big difference was in the way that they conceived of nature, and humanity's role in the system of the universe. Philosophy (sometimes in the form of religion) likely made a big difference. The great Alexandrian scientists such as Hero and Tsebius made historic discoveries of hydraulics and steam power, but basically did not create anything equivalent to the labour saving machines of the industrial revolution. (and who knows what blue prints and treatises perished in the flames of the Great Library!) Instead they constructed all sorts of complicated machinery as entertaining novelties, for example: coin operated robots that poured drinks and sang songs, or the first pipe organss. (Or in the case of Archimedes, super weapons for sinking enemy ships) It seems that one of the philosophical barriers was that it never occurred to anyone to put this science to use to help people, or to change the way society worked. (Whitehead has said something along the lines of it being unlikely that modern western science could have developed without the philosophical worldview of Christianity.)
Why is that the ancient Greeks could make great discoveries, and build incredible machines without using them to change society? A likely reason is that despite their brilliance, they lived in a very class-based society and that these are inherently conservative. If you one of the upper class, there isn't much benefit in making the hoi polloi more upwardly mobile.
Another idea is that even great inventions remain curiosities if they don't find a compelling application. (Why use a steam engine to make a locomotive, if it doesn't matter whether you get somewhere faster?) And a huge disincentive against the application of labour replacing machines existed in the world of the ancient Greeks: Slavery. Large numbers of slaves existed at all levels of Greek society. With free human labour available to do drudge work, what was the incentive to invest in the replacement of human labour with machines?
Phantom: Raises the question why the Greeks didn't have an Industrial Revolution way back when, doesn't it? Makes you wonder what the secret ingredient is.
The secret ingredient is "inspiration." Think Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein.
That intuitive leap beyond what the sum of human knowledge of the time is. Had some ancient Greek (or Roman) made an inspirational leap after the invention of the aeolipile (first steam engine) we'd be a millenium ahead of where we are now technilogically. The Greeks and Romans just thought is was some toy. The ancient Greeks also invented rail tracks. Can you imagine if someone had made that inspirational leap of combining the aeolipile with rail tracks???
Well said Rudy, I've got to agree and you said it better than I ever could. :P
Philosophy and an extreme class-based society were very significant factors in the lack of an "ancient industrial revolution". It wasn't that they were incapable, they just lacked the incentive to change more than anything.
Almost as important as "inspiration", is marketing. I've had some great ideas that died on the vine, only to see someone with better marketing skills turn them into realities.
The Greek civilization, if it hadn't collapsed under its own weight of corruption and hubris might have brought about everything we have now a thousand years earlier. Instead, Roman culture adopted Greek knowledge, and then applied it to conquering the world. They never really progressed the knowledge but they did manage to make it a weapion against their enemies.
A geophysicist I work with introduced me to this marvel of ancient invention, which led to conversations about ancient atomic warfare in India and origins of vitrified glass found on this planet. We then discussed abiotic oil. We talked for hours and both agreed that no one has a clue about global warming or how the human race will meet its' demise.
...it's a calculator not a computer since "It multiplies, divides and subtracts, but you can't program it," he says.
You don't need to program it since it appears to be programmed as is.
Posted by: Reid at December 20, 2008 11:53 PM
Yep, they were so close, so often. Talos had invented nearly every piece of the puzzle for a steam engine, yet never put it together.
Some think that the prevalence of slavery was the main impediment to the leap into industrialization.
Was hoping there would be some mention of the metalworking techniques. Were the original components and the replicas cast, hand cut or a combination of both?
There was a sort of early industrial revolution in that era. The production of iron was critical for weapons like swords and military hardware of all kinds and the main fuel used to smelt iron was charcoal. The felling of trees to make charcoal resulted in erosion on a huge scale and the silting up of the Mediterranean Sea shoreline and impacted many previously navigable rivers feeding into it.
Sgt. LeJaune asks: "Were the original components and the replicas cast, hand cut or a combination of both?"
As I understand it (and those better informed should jump in if I'm wrong) the machine was bronze and housed in a wooden box. Michael Wright says the only "difficult" piece was the recessed ring on the front dial, but this is perhaps understatement on his part.
Precision on the level demonstrated is -extremely- difficult to attain with hand tools. Don't forget, they had no screw-regulated cutting lathe for the gear teeth, no milling machine to surface the plates, no micrometers to measure with (because no regulated screws) and on and on.
Then there's the mathematics that governed the design. That's a whole 'nother level of sophisticated brainiometry.
This machine was the masterwork of an inspired genius and his whole crew of journeymen metalworkers. It probably cost as much as a small fleet of ships at the time.
How far we have come. You can most likely download plans for this thing off the Web and cut it yourself on a desk-top CNC machine. Or cast the parts deadly accurate with a fast prototyper. In a pinch you could re-calculate all the gearings and etc. on your PC and design it yourself from scratch with a pretty basic CAD program and then cut it.
Be a good high school science fair project. Scary, eh?