24 ms·

Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

306 points by justinzollars 5y ago

supperburg 5y ago
There was a point in time where Ancient Rome had plumbed, running water. And there wouldn’t running water again for 2000 years later. I think people are obsessed with technology but in reality stability counts way more than anything else.
gus_massa 5y ago
In case you have not seen it, there is a very interesting video series by Clickspring about building an Antikythera Mechanism with tools that were abailable at that time. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0... The tl;dw is that it was possible to build it with tools that were probably available, but some tools are specialized enough to guess that they had already build other similar devices. The final IRL reconstructed device is very nice. It's a long serie (10 episodes of 15 minutes each + some additional videos with even more details in other playlist) but it's worth watching.
- fho 5y ago
  Did I miss that he finished the mechanism? From what I've seen he went into hiatus and has been only posting ClickSpring "clips" for a while now?
  - db48x 5y ago
    He hasn’t completely finished his reconstruction, but he hasn’t entirely been on a hiatus either. He co–authored a paper on the calendar ring of the mechanism: https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BHI-Antikythera-Mechanism-Evidence-of-a-Lunar-Calendar.pdf https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BHI-Antikythera... But he hasn’t made many videos the last year or two.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Some of his videos are only available via Patreon.
      - utopcell 5y ago
        I support him on Patreon and I don't think that's true. They are just released earlier there.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    I saw the videos a long time ago, so I'm probably misremembering. He probably made a good chunk of it that is way more than what I could do [1], and after a few years I got confused. [1] In the secondary school I made a dice of iron and two hammers (one with a lathe and one with a ¿planer?). My ability is not even close to his.
- stan_rogers 5y ago
  That series still isn't over. It just got interrupted a couple of times. The first interruption was explained in Episode 10 - that was the discovery that the way one of the wheels was divided in the remaining teeth likely indicated that the mechanism was based on a lunar rather than a solar calendar, and that part needed to wait for the peer review and publication of a paper before the series could continue. The next interruption had more to do with Chris's real passion of watch and clock making - he had access to a couple of decorative engines (a straight-line engine and a rose engine), probably temporarily, since they would in no way both fit into the little closet he has for a shop, and he did some rather impressive guilloché and enamel work with those. When the series picks up (if it does), the hard parts are yet to come, like the planetary dial and its crapload of pointers. One thing Chris has done that people like Michael Wright didn't was to assume that anyone who was building something like that, with its obvious signs of not being a rough prototype, would have made some sort of jig for some of the parts rather than, say, laboriously walking off tooth spacing for every single gear, and that some sort of lathe, which was known to exist and be used for wood from illustrations both contemporary with and far preceding the device, would have likely been used to make round things out of soft metal.
- n3dm 5y ago
  I was so intrigued by his videos, the story of the mechanism, that I went and saw the actual remains of it when I was overseas and in Athens. Chris tweeted a photo I took of it while I was there.
smitty1e 5y ago
"Simply shouldn't exist" Pyramids were wonders of the ancient world long before the Python web framework. The condescencion of the modern age toward those who came before use never ceases to amuse.
- digbybk 5y ago
  If a web framework in the Pyramids was discovered, it would defy our understanding of the history of technology and "simply shouldn't exist". It's a dramatic way of putting it, but it's really just saying that our understanding was wrong. It shouldn't exist given our model of the world, so our model is wrong.
- luma 5y ago
  All they're saying is that the technology represented in this device has no equivalent in the historical record anywhere near that time and that place. It's not to say that it literally cannot exist, rather, our historical understanding of these peoples is clearly incomplete. These are the sorts of findings that change our understanding of history which makes it pretty exciting to me. The Clickspring series on this mechanism was mentioned elsewhere and is some of the finest content on YouTube, I'd strongly recommend checking it out.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    I think that's gp's point: rather than saying "An ancient computer that we don't understand is making us realise how little we know about the ancient world and challenging our assumptions about ancient technology" the headline is "An ancient computer that shouldn't exist".
  - rozab 5y ago
    There are actually several descriptions of similar devices in the literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_devices_in_ancient_literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_...
    - 5y ago
rozab 5y ago
Jonathan Blow's talk 'Preventing the Collapse of Civilization' goes into detail about how technology can regress, with the Mechanism being one example. This kind of thing is far more common than we think, most would be surprised to learn that Ancient Greece had writing for about 600 years before forgetting it. There was no writing in Greece for over 400 years, until they adopted the Phoenician alphabet around 730 BC. He compares this situation to the state of software development today. It's a sobering watch. https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk
- hnmullany 5y ago
  Same way - the extended 3rd century crisis in the Roman Empire led to a loss of sculpting expertise. No art was commissioned for so long that skills weren't passed on.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    An example closer to home, though perhaps not as stark, is the loss of expertise in various industries that have been outsourced. The US is a good example. This is one (of many) arguments against outsourcing your industry just because it's cheaper and increases the profits of the outsourcing company. The tradition and culture that allows a certain industry to flourish is interrupted and destroyed and rebuilding that is no small task.
    - jimhefferon 5y ago
      I had a summer job one year working on space stuff. I was in the clean room and the first day they took me back there, white suit and all, and took some ball bearings off a wire rack. They were maybe a foot in diameter. My job that summer was to test to see which were the least noisy. (Basically, they rotated very slowly, and there was a phono needle resting on the outside with a strip chart measuring the vibration caused when balls hit each other, etc.) The best ones were going up. They told me to be careful. These were the rejects from another project, but this project was legally required to use only US tech and the US no longer had the ability to manufacture bearings this large, since we had outsourced for some time and everyone who could do it got out of the business. So we needed these exact ones. (This was the late 70's.)
wheelerof4te 5y ago
Just think abput all the knowledge that was lost over the centuries and millenia of human civilization. Who are we to think that our technology is the greatest and the most advanced on this planet? We have no conclusive evidence to claim such titles. Ancient people have drawings of strange creatures and devices that descend from the heavens. Even the Pyramids show signs of advanced engineering, such as deep tunnels and chambers beneath layers of limestone and rocks. These structures were neccessary for survival under the scorching sun during the summer. During winter's cold nights, rocks provided good thermal isolation. We now know of huge chambers and hallways carved deep into the Pyramids. Maybe they were used as gathering places, with many chambers providing shelter and comfort? Who knows. Only couple of years earlier we thought to know everything about ancient Greece. Then this happened.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > Only couple of years earlier we thought to know everything about ancient Greece I don't think any historian would claim that, or would ever have claimed that. Knowledge of the ancient world is extremely limited and patchy.
- darkerside 5y ago
  This is generally considered a dangerous line of thinking, but I believe society has become too soft. We're so frightened of mystical thinking and being wrong that people aren't willing to entertain "dumb" ideas. Just don't make the mistake of thinking it's anything more than speculation.
  - ZanyProgrammer 5y ago
    > We're so frightened of mystical thinking and being wrong that people aren't willing to entertain "dumb" ideas. As the pandemic has showed, quite the contrary we embrace too many "dumb" ideas.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      This is what I'm talking about, folks!
nathias 5y ago
Technology can stay 'inert' even if it is invented, for example the Romans already knew steam machines but didn't find a use for them, probably because they had slaves to do all that cheaper. Until recently solar power tech was the same ...
- rsynnott 5y ago
  This is a _bit_ of a myth; the main reason that Roman-era steam engines went nowhere was that they didn't have the metallurgy to make them practical. Like, they had _watermills_; the idea that they were uninterested in mechanical power because they had slaves doesn't really hold up.
  - nathias 5y ago
    Interesting, what metallurgical skills were they missing? Wouldn't even a very crude steam machine be better than animal harness? Maybe the missing part was coal, burning wood would be very inefficient ...
    - jccooper 5y ago
      Romans had bloomery-made wrought iron only, which was a hand-made process of uneven quality, and made only in small batches. The role of carbon (and how to introduce it) was only vaguely known, so quality would vary. It would be quite difficult to make a boiler with bloomery iron. The blast furnace only showed up around 1100. The Romans could certainly have made a Newcomen-style low-pressure steam engine; the first boilers were made of lead and copper (though they quickly switched to iron). However, those are of only mild usefulness. Perhaps they would have found employment in the Roman world in the same place they did historically: de-watering mines. However, it would have to compete with slaves and mules, and there's not a lot of coal in the Mediterranean world, so fuel costs would be substantial, especially for such an inefficient device. A more useful high-pressure Watt style engine could perhaps be made of bronze, but the cost would be fairly astronomical. The Romans could pay it, of course, if they wanted to; huge quantities of bronze would be used in ship rams and statues. But they didn't know they could, and it's uncertain that they'd want to if they did.
throwawayay02 5y ago
It is absolutely not a computer, though. They observed the observable astrological phenomena was cyclical and made a system of gears for their periods to predict it's state. It's interesting, but for context it is centuries younger than the first Greek geared clocks, so it's definitely not something we should be too surprised that existed.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Citation needed? First time I'm hearing anyone say that this mechanism is not an anachronism based on current historical timelines.
- db48x 5y ago
  It is absolutely a special–purpose computer. Of course it’s not a general–purpose programmable computer such as the ones we use today, but it is still a computer.
  - throwawayay02 5y ago
    What is your dictionary definition of computer then? Is a sundial a computer because it tells the time? Is an abacus, or a Genaille–Lucas ruler, a computer?
    - db48x 5y ago
      A special–purpose computer is any device which computes an answer to a specific question given some input or initial conditions. An abacus or slide rule is not a computer because they are not designed for a specific question or problem (but they can of course be an aid to computation). With the Antikythera mechanism, the operator sets the machine to the current date, and then turns the crank to advance the date. The dials on the face would continuously show the positions of several planets, the phase of the moon, the eclipses, and possibly one or two other things. Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine computed the values of polynomials. The operator would set the coefficients of the polynomial, then turn the crank to compute successive values of that polynomial for successive values of X. He never finished it though. The firing computer on a WWII destroyer computed the correct elevation of the guns, based on inputs that encoded the position and velocity of the ship, the position and velocity of the target, and several other variables. https://youtu.be/gwf5mAlI7Ug?t=45 https://youtu.be/gwf5mAlI7Ug?t=45 General–purpose computers take as input a _program_, and the program specifies the problem to be solved. You could load a program for computing eclipses one minute, and the next minute load a program for computing polynomials or firing solutions, or load one to check your email. The hardware hasn’t changed, only the program and inputs have changed. Contrast that with the Difference Engine: to make the difference engine compute eclipses or firing solutions, you would have to swap out all of the gears and shafts, and build a different frame to hold them all. It would be turned into a completely different machine.
sersi 5y ago
Another very good related video about the Antikythera mechanism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-zWbxm2lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-zWbxm2lY
ninjamayo 5y ago
For anyone interested, this museum in Thessaloniki Greece: https://www.noesis.edu.gr/en/ancient-greek-technology/ https://www.noesis.edu.gr/en/ancient-greek-technology/ has a lot of very interesting items. If you ever visit the city, worth going there. I was particularly impressed with Syracusia, the giant ship/castle designed by Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracusia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracusia
- tsoukase 5y ago
  Absolutely invaluable place for every age. A day full of experiences (technology, science, history...).
tragomaskhalos 5y ago
As a kid I was really into the whole 'ancient mysteries' thing and wrote about the Antikythera mechanism in gushing / awed tones in my English O-level ! Luckily the examiner was kind, but years later I realise it must have come across as all a bit Von Daniken.
dandare 5y ago
Other "out-of-place" artifacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact
vmception 5y ago
Because of the backwards things occurring on the other side of the Mediterranean? Weird standard. Its like a historian researching Iraq in the year 4,050 AD and also finding a ancient semiconductor factory in Austria saying “huh, that shouldn't exist” On today’s timeless news, group of wandering nomads hopes for religious nation state, more at 11!
Robotbeat 5y ago
Add “Antikythera” to the title.
tzs 5y ago
I think we tend to underestimate what ancient technology could produce because we forget that in ancient times they often operated on longer timescales than we do. With our technology for example we could make all the parts for the Antikythera mechanism in a short time. The ancient Greeks definitely had no technology that would have allowed them to do that, so we see the existence of the Antikythera mechanism as a great mystery. But I don't see any reason to believe that the Greeks built it in a short time. It could easily be the lifework of the builder, or even the lifework of successive generations of a family of builders. If you need to make a very precise gear in a day you need our technology. If you need to make a very precise gear in 50 years you just need someone with an abrasive that is harder than the material you are making the gear from.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Same goes for the perfectly fitted stones in Inkan walls in Peru. They weren't built by aliens or telekinesis, but rather unoccupied workers that rubbed on the stones all day for decades. There is plenty of evidence that these walls and cities were never in a "finished" state, but always in progress, with partially complete stones and scattered pieces not yet near the wall in many sites.
  - beamatronic 5y ago
    What's remarkable to me is to think about the infrastructure that must have existed, even to support this basic labor. All these stones had to get quarried and moved around. All these workers had to be fed, housed, and clothed. Whatever tools and simple machines they used, would have required constant maintenance.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    Then there are projects like Colosseum which took only 7-8 years to build. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum or Parthenon that took 9 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon
    - 5y ago
xibalba 5y ago
Previously on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Antikythera+mechanism https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Antikythera+mechanism I am curious, is this device as fascinating to the average person as it is to the average HN'er? I suspect not, but I don't really understand why. I myself have read quite a few articles/posts and watched a few videos about it. Every time I re-encounter it, I get sucked back in. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
- nefitty 5y ago
  It seemed like a near-mystical piece of technology when I encountered it as a kid watching The History Channel. Tech-minded people probably self-select here anyway...
stabbles 5y ago
I realize how much I miss the #dislikes for videos like these. The title sounds clickbaity and #dislikes would confirm that. I guess it is not clickbait given that it's on hackernews and by the BBC, but if this context was missing...
- walterbell 5y ago
  Would YT remove comments which posted the dislike count from Archive.org?
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Automate it!
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Anything new in this that isn't in all the many posts from back in March or so? Lots of discussion: 9 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 5 months ago, around the time this video was originally posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684
pkpioneer 5y ago
8 Ways to Make Your Old Laptop Feel New Again A good computer is understandably expensive, but it sometimes feels like it isn’t worth the sticker price. After a few years of use, many laptops and PCs start to run slow; typical tasks are no longer as easy as they once were, and you find yourself eyeing the new computers on the market. But before you drop $2,000 on one of Apple’s new MacBook Pros, it’s worth figuring out if you can turn your old computer into a new one. Or at least, one that runs a lot more like a new one. https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/12/8-ways-to-make-your-old-laptop-feel-new.html https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/12/8-ways-to-make-your-o...
dang 5y ago
Maybe a good time to do this: The Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684 - July 2021 (29 comments) The Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27915777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27915777 - July 2021 (3 comments) Scientists Have Unlocked the Secrets of the Ancient 'Antikythera Mechanism' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482765 - March 2021 (1 comment) Scientists Have Unlocked the Secrets of the Ancient 'Antikythera Mechanism' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469609 - March 2021 (1 comment) Scientists solve another piece of the puzzling Antikythera mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26444311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26444311 - March 2021 (1 comment) A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 - March 2021 (130 comments) The Antikythera Mechanism – Evidence of a Lunar Calendar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25440018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25440018 - Dec 2020 (1 comment) Antikythera Mechanism: Evidence of a Lunar Calendar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412576 - Dec 2020 (1 comment) Hacker’s Discovery Changes Understanding of the Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25408405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25408405 - Dec 2020 (5 comments) 2000 Year Old Analog Computer - Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24247667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24247667 - Aug 2020 (2 comments) Decoding the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculator: Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195196 - Oct 2019 (24 comments) Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20543223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20543223 - July 2019 (35 comments) Was the Antikythera Mechanism the world’s first computer? (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642978 - Dec 2018 (56 comments) Missing piece of Antikythera Mechanism found on Aegean seabed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18455764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18455764 - Nov 2018 (3 comments) Missing Piece of Antikythera Mechanism Found on Aegean Seabed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18446622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18446622 - Nov 2018 (1 comment) Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18276098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18276098 - Oct 2018 (3 comments) Human skeleton found on famed Antikythera shipwreck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12538876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12538876 - Sept 2016 (6 comments) The Antikythera mechanism is still revealing its secrets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11902342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11902342 - June 2016 (66 comments) The Antikythera Computer, Circa 205 BC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546474 - Nov 2015 (1 comment) Marine Archaeologists Excavate Greek Antikythera Shipwreck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280722 - Sept 2015 (1 comment) Divers return to famous Antikythera wreck to hunt for treasures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274733 - Sept 2015 (2 comments) The 2000 Year-Old Computer – Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism (2012) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192082 - Sept 2015 (5 comments) Famed Antikythera wreck yields more treasures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8438996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8438996 - Oct 2014 (8 comments) Reconstruction of planetary gearwork in the Antikythera Mechanism (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329647 - Sept 2014 (1 comment) The Two Thousand Year Old Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4878859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4878859 - Dec 2012 (1 comment) Apple engineer uses Lego to rebuild Antikythera mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1993988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1993988 - Dec 2010 (42 comments) Lego Antikythera Mechanism (video) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991557 - Dec 2010 (2 comments) Antikythera Machine built out of Lego - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990493 - Dec 2010 (3 comments) Lego Antikythera Mechanism (oldest known scientific computer) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1988818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1988818 - Dec 2010 (1 comment) The Antikythera Mechanism: Animation and Analysis [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948365 - Nov 2010 (1 comment) Beautiful phyiscal model of the Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871202 - Nov 2010 (3 comments) Antikythera Reborn – The Hackers of Ancient Greece - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101701 - Jan 2008 (2 comments)
kanzenryu2 5y ago
The thing that really gets me is just how densely the whole mechanism is packed together. What a masterpiece. The techniques must have been developed incrementally over many revisions of the machine, perhaps over several lifetimes by various machinists and/or designers. Sadly I read somewhere that the "slop" between the gears (the mechanical imperfections that add or multiply together over many gears) would overwhelm the more complex calculations that some of the machine was intended to perform.
- 6nf 5y ago
  From the Clickspring reconstruction, it seems clear to me that the 'slop' in the gears won't be a problem in the final mechanism.
xyzzy21 5y ago
The presumption that other people aren't smart enough to do what you can or imagine has a name: bigotry. The "shouldn't exist" is bigotry. It's also evidence that we see even today that knowledge is fragile and easily lost when it has a large tacit component. Most things technological are highly fragile because half of the knowledge required to create them is tacit. See also: "FOG BANK".
- nefitty 5y ago
  Presumably you're talking about the classified nuclear material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
- ncmncm 5y ago
  "Shouldn't exist" simply means that nothing else like it has ever been found, and (almost) nothing like it has even been described in surviving literature.
- simonh 5y ago
  It has nothing to do with assumptions about how smart people in the past were, we have every reason to believe they were just as smart as us. In fact we have direct evidence from surviving mathematical texts, treatises on philosophy, etc that they could be highly original and insightful thinkers. Smarts is simply not at all the issue and frankly you describing diligent scholars who clearly have huge appreciation and admiration of the people they study bigots is highly offensive and uncalled for. The real bigots are the conspiracy nuts who think ancient civilizations we know of couldn't have achieved the many things we evidence of, and think it must have been aliens or other advanced civilizations on implausible magic islands. The question is simply one of technology. We can't simply assume that people at a certain time had technology we have no evidence for, no accounts of, and no evidence of similar or near precursor technologies. The Antikythera mechanism was a shock because there was no evidence any such thing could exist at that time. We also don't have evidence such things existed in Babylon a thousand years previously, or in Egypt 3,000 years before that. Equally we have no evidence they definitely didn't have them. So should we assume they had such things? We simply make the best estimates we can and adjust when we find wonderful surprises like this one.
socialdemocrat 5y ago
The reason mechanisms like this are so mind blowing is because one simple has no precious artifacts from this time period which would make us aware of the fact that they had the technology to make such objects. And by technology I don’t mean modern day CNC machines. However we know that sophisticated mechanical work began again in The 1400s with various clock makers. However these still typically had a variety of tools and measuring instruments. It is not immediate obvious that ancient Greeks would have variety of files, calipers, lathes etc which appropriate techniques developed to use them to make sophisticated machinery.
detaro 5y ago
Is there a good resource explaining the current understanding of how it was working? Wikipedia has some diagrams and text, but at least to me very hard to understand.

306 points by justinzollars 5y ago

There was a point in time where Ancient Rome had plumbed, running water. And there wouldn’t running water again for 2000 years later. I think people are obsessed with technology but in reality stability counts way more than anything else.

gus_massa 5y ago

In case you have not seen it, there is a very interesting video series by Clickspring about building an Antikythera Mechanism with tools that were abailable at that time. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0... The tl;dw is that it was possible to build it with tools that were probably available, but some tools are specialized enough to guess that they had already build other similar devices. The final IRL reconstructed device is very nice. It's a long serie (10 episodes of 15 minutes each + some additional videos with even more details in other playlist) but it's worth watching.

fho 5y ago
Did I miss that he finished the mechanism? From what I've seen he went into hiatus and has been only posting ClickSpring "clips" for a while now?
- db48x 5y ago
  He hasn’t completely finished his reconstruction, but he hasn’t entirely been on a hiatus either. He co–authored a paper on the calendar ring of the mechanism: https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BHI-Antikythera-Mechanism-Evidence-of-a-Lunar-Calendar.pdf https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BHI-Antikythera... But he hasn’t made many videos the last year or two.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Some of his videos are only available via Patreon.
    - utopcell 5y ago
      I support him on Patreon and I don't think that's true. They are just released earlier there.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I saw the videos a long time ago, so I'm probably misremembering. He probably made a good chunk of it that is way more than what I could do [1], and after a few years I got confused. [1] In the secondary school I made a dice of iron and two hammers (one with a lathe and one with a ¿planer?). My ability is not even close to his.
stan_rogers 5y ago
That series still isn't over. It just got interrupted a couple of times. The first interruption was explained in Episode 10 - that was the discovery that the way one of the wheels was divided in the remaining teeth likely indicated that the mechanism was based on a lunar rather than a solar calendar, and that part needed to wait for the peer review and publication of a paper before the series could continue. The next interruption had more to do with Chris's real passion of watch and clock making - he had access to a couple of decorative engines (a straight-line engine and a rose engine), probably temporarily, since they would in no way both fit into the little closet he has for a shop, and he did some rather impressive guilloché and enamel work with those. When the series picks up (if it does), the hard parts are yet to come, like the planetary dial and its crapload of pointers. One thing Chris has done that people like Michael Wright didn't was to assume that anyone who was building something like that, with its obvious signs of not being a rough prototype, would have made some sort of jig for some of the parts rather than, say, laboriously walking off tooth spacing for every single gear, and that some sort of lathe, which was known to exist and be used for wood from illustrations both contemporary with and far preceding the device, would have likely been used to make round things out of soft metal.
n3dm 5y ago
I was so intrigued by his videos, the story of the mechanism, that I went and saw the actual remains of it when I was overseas and in Athens. Chris tweeted a photo I took of it while I was there.

smitty1e 5y ago

"Simply shouldn't exist" Pyramids were wonders of the ancient world long before the Python web framework. The condescencion of the modern age toward those who came before use never ceases to amuse.

digbybk 5y ago
If a web framework in the Pyramids was discovered, it would defy our understanding of the history of technology and "simply shouldn't exist". It's a dramatic way of putting it, but it's really just saying that our understanding was wrong. It shouldn't exist given our model of the world, so our model is wrong.
luma 5y ago
All they're saying is that the technology represented in this device has no equivalent in the historical record anywhere near that time and that place. It's not to say that it literally cannot exist, rather, our historical understanding of these peoples is clearly incomplete. These are the sorts of findings that change our understanding of history which makes it pretty exciting to me. The Clickspring series on this mechanism was mentioned elsewhere and is some of the finest content on YouTube, I'd strongly recommend checking it out.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I think that's gp's point: rather than saying "An ancient computer that we don't understand is making us realise how little we know about the ancient world and challenging our assumptions about ancient technology" the headline is "An ancient computer that shouldn't exist".
- rozab 5y ago
  There are actually several descriptions of similar devices in the literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_devices_in_ancient_literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_...
  - 5y ago

rozab 5y ago

Jonathan Blow's talk 'Preventing the Collapse of Civilization' goes into detail about how technology can regress, with the Mechanism being one example. This kind of thing is far more common than we think, most would be surprised to learn that Ancient Greece had writing for about 600 years before forgetting it. There was no writing in Greece for over 400 years, until they adopted the Phoenician alphabet around 730 BC. He compares this situation to the state of software development today. It's a sobering watch. https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk

hnmullany 5y ago
Same way - the extended 3rd century crisis in the Roman Empire led to a loss of sculpting expertise. No art was commissioned for so long that skills weren't passed on.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  An example closer to home, though perhaps not as stark, is the loss of expertise in various industries that have been outsourced. The US is a good example. This is one (of many) arguments against outsourcing your industry just because it's cheaper and increases the profits of the outsourcing company. The tradition and culture that allows a certain industry to flourish is interrupted and destroyed and rebuilding that is no small task.
  - jimhefferon 5y ago
    I had a summer job one year working on space stuff. I was in the clean room and the first day they took me back there, white suit and all, and took some ball bearings off a wire rack. They were maybe a foot in diameter. My job that summer was to test to see which were the least noisy. (Basically, they rotated very slowly, and there was a phono needle resting on the outside with a strip chart measuring the vibration caused when balls hit each other, etc.) The best ones were going up. They told me to be careful. These were the rejects from another project, but this project was legally required to use only US tech and the US no longer had the ability to manufacture bearings this large, since we had outsourced for some time and everyone who could do it got out of the business. So we needed these exact ones. (This was the late 70's.)

wheelerof4te 5y ago

Just think abput all the knowledge that was lost over the centuries and millenia of human civilization. Who are we to think that our technology is the greatest and the most advanced on this planet? We have no conclusive evidence to claim such titles. Ancient people have drawings of strange creatures and devices that descend from the heavens. Even the Pyramids show signs of advanced engineering, such as deep tunnels and chambers beneath layers of limestone and rocks. These structures were neccessary for survival under the scorching sun during the summer. During winter's cold nights, rocks provided good thermal isolation. We now know of huge chambers and hallways carved deep into the Pyramids. Maybe they were used as gathering places, with many chambers providing shelter and comfort? Who knows. Only couple of years earlier we thought to know everything about ancient Greece. Then this happened.

rsynnott 5y ago
> Only couple of years earlier we thought to know everything about ancient Greece I don't think any historian would claim that, or would ever have claimed that. Knowledge of the ancient world is extremely limited and patchy.
darkerside 5y ago
This is generally considered a dangerous line of thinking, but I believe society has become too soft. We're so frightened of mystical thinking and being wrong that people aren't willing to entertain "dumb" ideas. Just don't make the mistake of thinking it's anything more than speculation.
- ZanyProgrammer 5y ago
  > We're so frightened of mystical thinking and being wrong that people aren't willing to entertain "dumb" ideas. As the pandemic has showed, quite the contrary we embrace too many "dumb" ideas.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    This is what I'm talking about, folks!

nathias 5y ago

Technology can stay 'inert' even if it is invented, for example the Romans already knew steam machines but didn't find a use for them, probably because they had slaves to do all that cheaper. Until recently solar power tech was the same ...

rsynnott 5y ago
This is a _bit_ of a myth; the main reason that Roman-era steam engines went nowhere was that they didn't have the metallurgy to make them practical. Like, they had _watermills_; the idea that they were uninterested in mechanical power because they had slaves doesn't really hold up.
- nathias 5y ago
  Interesting, what metallurgical skills were they missing? Wouldn't even a very crude steam machine be better than animal harness? Maybe the missing part was coal, burning wood would be very inefficient ...
  - jccooper 5y ago
    Romans had bloomery-made wrought iron only, which was a hand-made process of uneven quality, and made only in small batches. The role of carbon (and how to introduce it) was only vaguely known, so quality would vary. It would be quite difficult to make a boiler with bloomery iron. The blast furnace only showed up around 1100. The Romans could certainly have made a Newcomen-style low-pressure steam engine; the first boilers were made of lead and copper (though they quickly switched to iron). However, those are of only mild usefulness. Perhaps they would have found employment in the Roman world in the same place they did historically: de-watering mines. However, it would have to compete with slaves and mules, and there's not a lot of coal in the Mediterranean world, so fuel costs would be substantial, especially for such an inefficient device. A more useful high-pressure Watt style engine could perhaps be made of bronze, but the cost would be fairly astronomical. The Romans could pay it, of course, if they wanted to; huge quantities of bronze would be used in ship rams and statues. But they didn't know they could, and it's uncertain that they'd want to if they did.

throwawayay02 5y ago

It is absolutely not a computer, though. They observed the observable astrological phenomena was cyclical and made a system of gears for their periods to predict it's state. It's interesting, but for context it is centuries younger than the first Greek geared clocks, so it's definitely not something we should be too surprised that existed.

ramraj07 5y ago
Citation needed? First time I'm hearing anyone say that this mechanism is not an anachronism based on current historical timelines.
db48x 5y ago
It is absolutely a special–purpose computer. Of course it’s not a general–purpose programmable computer such as the ones we use today, but it is still a computer.
- throwawayay02 5y ago
  What is your dictionary definition of computer then? Is a sundial a computer because it tells the time? Is an abacus, or a Genaille–Lucas ruler, a computer?
  - db48x 5y ago
    A special–purpose computer is any device which computes an answer to a specific question given some input or initial conditions. An abacus or slide rule is not a computer because they are not designed for a specific question or problem (but they can of course be an aid to computation). With the Antikythera mechanism, the operator sets the machine to the current date, and then turns the crank to advance the date. The dials on the face would continuously show the positions of several planets, the phase of the moon, the eclipses, and possibly one or two other things. Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine computed the values of polynomials. The operator would set the coefficients of the polynomial, then turn the crank to compute successive values of that polynomial for successive values of X. He never finished it though. The firing computer on a WWII destroyer computed the correct elevation of the guns, based on inputs that encoded the position and velocity of the ship, the position and velocity of the target, and several other variables. https://youtu.be/gwf5mAlI7Ug?t=45 https://youtu.be/gwf5mAlI7Ug?t=45 General–purpose computers take as input a _program_, and the program specifies the problem to be solved. You could load a program for computing eclipses one minute, and the next minute load a program for computing polynomials or firing solutions, or load one to check your email. The hardware hasn’t changed, only the program and inputs have changed. Contrast that with the Difference Engine: to make the difference engine compute eclipses or firing solutions, you would have to swap out all of the gears and shafts, and build a different frame to hold them all. It would be turned into a completely different machine.

sersi 5y ago

Another very good related video about the Antikythera mechanism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-zWbxm2lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-zWbxm2lY

ninjamayo 5y ago

For anyone interested, this museum in Thessaloniki Greece: https://www.noesis.edu.gr/en/ancient-greek-technology/ https://www.noesis.edu.gr/en/ancient-greek-technology/ has a lot of very interesting items. If you ever visit the city, worth going there. I was particularly impressed with Syracusia, the giant ship/castle designed by Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracusia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracusia

tsoukase 5y ago
Absolutely invaluable place for every age. A day full of experiences (technology, science, history...).

tragomaskhalos 5y ago

As a kid I was really into the whole 'ancient mysteries' thing and wrote about the Antikythera mechanism in gushing / awed tones in my English O-level ! Luckily the examiner was kind, but years later I realise it must have come across as all a bit Von Daniken.

dandare 5y ago

Other "out-of-place" artifacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact

vmception 5y ago

Because of the backwards things occurring on the other side of the Mediterranean? Weird standard. Its like a historian researching Iraq in the year 4,050 AD and also finding a ancient semiconductor factory in Austria saying “huh, that shouldn't exist” On today’s timeless news, group of wandering nomads hopes for religious nation state, more at 11!

Robotbeat 5y ago

Add “Antikythera” to the title.

tzs 5y ago

I think we tend to underestimate what ancient technology could produce because we forget that in ancient times they often operated on longer timescales than we do. With our technology for example we could make all the parts for the Antikythera mechanism in a short time. The ancient Greeks definitely had no technology that would have allowed them to do that, so we see the existence of the Antikythera mechanism as a great mystery. But I don't see any reason to believe that the Greeks built it in a short time. It could easily be the lifework of the builder, or even the lifework of successive generations of a family of builders. If you need to make a very precise gear in a day you need our technology. If you need to make a very precise gear in 50 years you just need someone with an abrasive that is harder than the material you are making the gear from.

colordrops 5y ago
Same goes for the perfectly fitted stones in Inkan walls in Peru. They weren't built by aliens or telekinesis, but rather unoccupied workers that rubbed on the stones all day for decades. There is plenty of evidence that these walls and cities were never in a "finished" state, but always in progress, with partially complete stones and scattered pieces not yet near the wall in many sites.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  What's remarkable to me is to think about the infrastructure that must have existed, even to support this basic labor. All these stones had to get quarried and moved around. All these workers had to be fed, housed, and clothed. Whatever tools and simple machines they used, would have required constant maintenance.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  Then there are projects like Colosseum which took only 7-8 years to build. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum or Parthenon that took 9 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon
  - 5y ago

xibalba 5y ago

Previously on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Antikythera+mechanism https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Antikythera+mechanism I am curious, is this device as fascinating to the average person as it is to the average HN'er? I suspect not, but I don't really understand why. I myself have read quite a few articles/posts and watched a few videos about it. Every time I re-encounter it, I get sucked back in. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire

nefitty 5y ago
It seemed like a near-mystical piece of technology when I encountered it as a kid watching The History Channel. Tech-minded people probably self-select here anyway...

stabbles 5y ago

I realize how much I miss the #dislikes for videos like these. The title sounds clickbaity and #dislikes would confirm that. I guess it is not clickbait given that it's on hackernews and by the BBC, but if this context was missing...

walterbell 5y ago
Would YT remove comments which posted the dislike count from Archive.org?
- nefitty 5y ago
  Automate it!

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Anything new in this that isn't in all the many posts from back in March or so? Lots of discussion: 9 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 5 months ago, around the time this video was originally posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684

pkpioneer 5y ago

8 Ways to Make Your Old Laptop Feel New Again A good computer is understandably expensive, but it sometimes feels like it isn’t worth the sticker price. After a few years of use, many laptops and PCs start to run slow; typical tasks are no longer as easy as they once were, and you find yourself eyeing the new computers on the market. But before you drop $2,000 on one of Apple’s new MacBook Pros, it’s worth figuring out if you can turn your old computer into a new one. Or at least, one that runs a lot more like a new one. https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/12/8-ways-to-make-your-old-laptop-feel-new.html https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/12/8-ways-to-make-your-o...

dang 5y ago

Maybe a good time to do this: The Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27934684 - July 2021 (29 comments) The Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27915777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27915777 - July 2021 (3 comments) Scientists Have Unlocked the Secrets of the Ancient 'Antikythera Mechanism' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482765 - March 2021 (1 comment) Scientists Have Unlocked the Secrets of the Ancient 'Antikythera Mechanism' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469609 - March 2021 (1 comment) Scientists solve another piece of the puzzling Antikythera mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26444311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26444311 - March 2021 (1 comment) A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435416 - March 2021 (130 comments) The Antikythera Mechanism – Evidence of a Lunar Calendar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25440018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25440018 - Dec 2020 (1 comment) Antikythera Mechanism: Evidence of a Lunar Calendar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412576 - Dec 2020 (1 comment) Hacker’s Discovery Changes Understanding of the Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25408405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25408405 - Dec 2020 (5 comments) 2000 Year Old Analog Computer - Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24247667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24247667 - Aug 2020 (2 comments) Decoding the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculator: Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195196 - Oct 2019 (24 comments) Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20543223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20543223 - July 2019 (35 comments) Was the Antikythera Mechanism the world’s first computer? (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642978 - Dec 2018 (56 comments) Missing piece of Antikythera Mechanism found on Aegean seabed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18455764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18455764 - Nov 2018 (3 comments) Missing Piece of Antikythera Mechanism Found on Aegean Seabed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18446622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18446622 - Nov 2018 (1 comment) Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18276098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18276098 - Oct 2018 (3 comments) Human skeleton found on famed Antikythera shipwreck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12538876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12538876 - Sept 2016 (6 comments) The Antikythera mechanism is still revealing its secrets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11902342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11902342 - June 2016 (66 comments) The Antikythera Computer, Circa 205 BC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546474 - Nov 2015 (1 comment) Marine Archaeologists Excavate Greek Antikythera Shipwreck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280722 - Sept 2015 (1 comment) Divers return to famous Antikythera wreck to hunt for treasures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10274733 - Sept 2015 (2 comments) The 2000 Year-Old Computer – Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism (2012) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192082 - Sept 2015 (5 comments) Famed Antikythera wreck yields more treasures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8438996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8438996 - Oct 2014 (8 comments) Reconstruction of planetary gearwork in the Antikythera Mechanism (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329647 - Sept 2014 (1 comment) The Two Thousand Year Old Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4878859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4878859 - Dec 2012 (1 comment) Apple engineer uses Lego to rebuild Antikythera mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1993988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1993988 - Dec 2010 (42 comments) Lego Antikythera Mechanism (video) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991557 - Dec 2010 (2 comments) Antikythera Machine built out of Lego - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990493 - Dec 2010 (3 comments) Lego Antikythera Mechanism (oldest known scientific computer) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1988818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1988818 - Dec 2010 (1 comment) The Antikythera Mechanism: Animation and Analysis [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948365 - Nov 2010 (1 comment) Beautiful phyiscal model of the Antikythera Mechanism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871202 - Nov 2010 (3 comments) Antikythera Reborn – The Hackers of Ancient Greece - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101701 - Jan 2008 (2 comments)

kanzenryu2 5y ago

The thing that really gets me is just how densely the whole mechanism is packed together. What a masterpiece. The techniques must have been developed incrementally over many revisions of the machine, perhaps over several lifetimes by various machinists and/or designers. Sadly I read somewhere that the "slop" between the gears (the mechanical imperfections that add or multiply together over many gears) would overwhelm the more complex calculations that some of the machine was intended to perform.

6nf 5y ago
From the Clickspring reconstruction, it seems clear to me that the 'slop' in the gears won't be a problem in the final mechanism.

xyzzy21 5y ago

The presumption that other people aren't smart enough to do what you can or imagine has a name: bigotry. The "shouldn't exist" is bigotry. It's also evidence that we see even today that knowledge is fragile and easily lost when it has a large tacit component. Most things technological are highly fragile because half of the knowledge required to create them is tacit. See also: "FOG BANK".

nefitty 5y ago
Presumably you're talking about the classified nuclear material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
ncmncm 5y ago
"Shouldn't exist" simply means that nothing else like it has ever been found, and (almost) nothing like it has even been described in surviving literature.
simonh 5y ago
It has nothing to do with assumptions about how smart people in the past were, we have every reason to believe they were just as smart as us. In fact we have direct evidence from surviving mathematical texts, treatises on philosophy, etc that they could be highly original and insightful thinkers. Smarts is simply not at all the issue and frankly you describing diligent scholars who clearly have huge appreciation and admiration of the people they study bigots is highly offensive and uncalled for. The real bigots are the conspiracy nuts who think ancient civilizations we know of couldn't have achieved the many things we evidence of, and think it must have been aliens or other advanced civilizations on implausible magic islands. The question is simply one of technology. We can't simply assume that people at a certain time had technology we have no evidence for, no accounts of, and no evidence of similar or near precursor technologies. The Antikythera mechanism was a shock because there was no evidence any such thing could exist at that time. We also don't have evidence such things existed in Babylon a thousand years previously, or in Egypt 3,000 years before that. Equally we have no evidence they definitely didn't have them. So should we assume they had such things? We simply make the best estimates we can and adjust when we find wonderful surprises like this one.

socialdemocrat 5y ago

The reason mechanisms like this are so mind blowing is because one simple has no precious artifacts from this time period which would make us aware of the fact that they had the technology to make such objects. And by technology I don’t mean modern day CNC machines. However we know that sophisticated mechanical work began again in The 1400s with various clock makers. However these still typically had a variety of tools and measuring instruments. It is not immediate obvious that ancient Greeks would have variety of files, calipers, lathes etc which appropriate techniques developed to use them to make sophisticated machinery.

detaro 5y ago

Is there a good resource explaining the current understanding of how it was working? Wikipedia has some diagrams and text, but at least to me very hard to understand.