I snapped a few photos from Russo's book 'The Forgotten Revolution' that show the logical structure of the mechanism, and also the pump of Ctesibus mentioned in

I snapped a few photos from Russo's book 'The Forgotten Revolution' that show the logical structure of the mechanism, and also the pump of Ctesibus mentioned in the article: https://imgur.com/a/BnaGIvW https://imgur.com/a/BnaGIvW The full citation for [Price: Gears] is Derek J. de Solla Price, "Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera mechanism - a calendar computer from ca 80 b.c.", Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. 64 (1974), part 7. Book reprint: New York, Science History Publications, 1975. ------ Copying an older comment of mine: The spectacular technical achievement of the antikythera mechanism, apart from its overall complexity, is the presence of differential gearing. Specifically, a differential turntable allows it to add or subtract angular velocities: you subtract the effect of the suns movement from the lunar movement to compute the lunar cycle. PS Gears and cog wheels were only invented a century or two before the antikythera mechanism; scientific progress during the Hellenistic era was very rapid! Then the decline after the roman conquest was quite rapid as well - by the imperial period (eg Heron's writings) techniques like differential gears had already been lost, and they wouldn't be reinvented till (i think?) the 18th century! -------- Also relevant to combat some of the nonsense about religion and rome that have appeared in this thread is this comment about the decline of greek science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644880