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Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time
- niels_olson 17y agoI'm going with clock thrown overboard on a vacation cruise or one of many complex geared machines used aboard ships throughout time for navigation. In any case, just happened to fall off a ship and land on the one below, about 50 to 100 years prior to excavation.
- robryan 17y agoLuckily we have good dating techniques to avoid this :)
- dfischer 17y agoI find things like this extremely interesting. Oh the hope for a lost civilization and or technology that stumps modern society...
- raphar 17y agoPlease don't miss the excellent two videos at Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=1406165298&id=52209781001 http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=140616529... I find amazing some of the technical details shown there.
- sarosh 17y agoPublished paper in Nature is at: http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/system/files/Antikythera_Nature2008_submitted.pdf http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/system/files/Antikythera...
- Luyt 17y agoOur ancestors were certainly not stupid ;-) Gears were already used in India as early as 2600 BC, Aristotle described gears in his lifetime - about 400 BC, and Archimedes' worm wheel dates from about 200 BC. In 40 BC Vitruvius described a grain mill powered by a water wheel and gear transmission, and in 28 BC someone equipped a carriage with an odometer. Brian Dunning devoted an episode of Skeptoid to the Antikythera Mechanism: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184 http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184
- volida 17y agoCould you please supply more information about the gears being used since 2600 BC in India? Wikipedia's extensive reference doesn't seem to have any http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears. Also, your initial statement is sine dicendo, therefore useless and rather questions the reason of your comment. Obviously the Antikythera mechanism is impressive because of the size and detail of the gears and their usage for computation.
- Luyt 17y agoI got the interesting information about gears from this document: http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IIT-MADRAS/Machine_Design_II/pdf/2_1.pdf http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IIT-MADRAS/Machine_Desig... The reason for my comment that our ancestors were not as stupid as some contemporary people think, was in reaction on another post which stated that the Antikythera Mechanism was probably just a hundred-year old clock thrown overboard in recent times (I should have quoted that comment for clarity). Some people cannot fathom that ancient people could realize impressive feats, just like we can. Take for example the pyramids: "the old Egyptians could never have build themselves, they must have gotten extraterrestrial help". This condescending view is also propagated by Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods' books.
- jacquesm 17y ago> Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods' It's a contender in the list of 'biggest pseudo scientific bs', runner up is the scientology junk.
- Luc 17y agoAnother interesting one from China, from (supposedly) 2600 BC: the South Pointing Chariot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pointing_Chariot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pointing_Chariot
- qw 17y agohttp://science.discovery.com/videos/what-the-ancients-knew-roman-mass-production.html http://science.discovery.com/videos/what-the-ancients-knew-r... "Romans were the first to invent mass production. They figured out how to use water wheels to create a factory flour mill."
- cema 17y agoOh, I remember reading about his find in an old (1970s or 1960s) issue of Russian pop sci journal Наука и Жизнь (Science and Life; apologies if the unicode did not work). I think one lesson here is that when the society does not value technology, technology suffers. It does not evolve on its own but needs encouragement and support. Just having smart people is not enough. I sometimes wonder what our life would have been had our ancestors started focusing on science and technology earlier, like if the scientific revolution had occurred several centuries before it did. We could have been much, much farther advanced -- or we could be living in a new stone age, I do not know.
- Retric 17y agoIt's not just a question of valuing the output of technology but also caring about the details. the mechanism could be used to predict the month, day and hour of an eclipse, and even accounted for leap years. The concept of leap years is part of our calendar system but that was invented far after this device was created. Yet, that type of accuracy is simply glossed over. Perhaps the device actually accounted for leap years in their ancient calender system or perhaps the somewhere in the chain from researcher to writer someone failed to understand that leap years having nothing to do with eclipses so it's a non problem. But, the lack of details suggests someone did not really care. When most people know how to make something that technology is rarely lost but consider how many accidental deaths it would take to set something like CPU fabrication technology back 10 years. Realistically is probably not a real threat, but there is little redundancy in much of our society.
- anigbrowl 17y agoUm...actually the concept of leap years were enshrined in the Julian Calendar a mere 100 years after this device was created, and although this subsequently mutated into the Gregorian calendar (with adjustments for centenary years) the basic idea was contemporary with this device. Aristarchus, who lived through most of the 3rd century BC, identified the length of the sidereal year with reasonable accuracy and is also the first person that we know of who argued that the earth rotated around the sun, among other insights. Knowing the exact periods of the terrestrial and lunar orbits would obviously have been a necessity for constructing this wondrous machine.
- tokenadult 17y agoWikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism submitted to HN 425 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233792 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233792
- stcredzero 17y agoSubmitted to reddit many, many times! Writing yet another blog post about this thing is a small cottage industry unto itself.
- dandelany 17y agoFrom http://www.antikythera-mechanism.com http://www.antikythera-mechanism.com : "Though nearly 95 percent of these have been deciphered by experts, there as not been a publication of the full text of the inscription." Has anyone been able to find any of this text published anywhere?
- sounddust 17y agoYou can read the original text yourself: http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/antikythera_mechanism/ http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/antikythera_mechanism/ (you might need to download the PTM viewer and PTM files to zoom in close enough).
- dandelany 17y agoYes, but it's in ancient Greek. I meant a translation?
- pmorici 17y agoHow is this a "computer"? The article really doesn't explain and to me it looks more like a clock. Clearly a very advanced clock but a clock none the less.
- michael_dorfman 17y agoIt depends upon your definition of "computer", of course. A clock is a single-purpose computing device; it's certainly not a general-purpose computing device, which is what most people when they speak of a "computer".
- robg 17y agoThis is the most utterly fascinating nugget I've read in a long time. The questions without answers really do boggle the mind.
- ismarc 17y agoHow did they manage to replicate the time selection dial on my half-built time machine? Speaking of which, I'm starting a fundraising campaign soon if anyone wants to contribute.
- motters 17y agoAlso see http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184 http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184
- daniel-cussen 17y agoHas it been established this thing works?
- lucifer 17y agoAlternatively you can view this as evidence that catastrophic social changes set back humans by 1500 years.
- BigZaphod 17y agoPessimist. :P
- estrabd 17y ago1500 years ahead of *our time. It's ridiculous to think that they could not have learned how to make special purpose computing machines.
- BigZaphod 17y agoI suspect the problem, and why much knowledge like this came and went over the centuries, is that so few people understood the why and how of it that once the local guy who did was killed or died, the knowledge went with him and his books were recycled, lost, or destroyed because they appeared meaningless.
- scotty79 17y ago> All I have to say is that if it wasn't for the miracle of Christianity, we'd be on %@#&ing Mars by now. Amusing comment. Some time ago while looking at some painting in Florence depicting Ascension of Jesus I had following idea: Time travel is actually physically possible only very hard to come up with. Christ was rouge time traveler who wanted to pose as god (like in 'Behold The Man') and got himself into a mess. Angels were rescue team that were to revive him and bring him back, but unfortunately the myth that our unfortunate traveler had started screwed up development of human thought so much that development of our science was delayed and took completely different path, far away from any ideas that might lead us to time travel before earth will be totally forgotten (Asimov's foundation like) or destroyed by future generations. Since Jesus and angels that took him will land somewhere in the future there actually might be second coming. Sort of. i hope we will be able to compare notes on development on human thought then.
- yread 17y agoI still like the orloj more :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orloj http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orloj