4 ms·
The article makes this sound a bit like a lamer, English version of the Antikythera mechanism. In reality it's just a quadrant, i.e., a portable sundial relying
by lamerose 3y ago
The article makes this sound a bit like a lamer, English version of the Antikythera mechanism. In reality it's just a quadrant, i.e., a portable sundial relying on gravity for alignment, and it's only a decade older than the next oldest specimen.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoThat's just one side. On the other it has a dial for calculating the Easter date.
- NeoTar 3y agoI sometimes wonder if advanced mathematics in Western Europe would have a survived without the need to calculate the date of Easter!
- 082349872349872 3y agoA colleague of mine started his career as a computer scientist in the then-Soviet Union. He was reading western papers that were using Easter calculation as an example of a non-trivial computation that "everyone knows", and wound up traveling all the way to a big library in Moscow before he found a book that gave him an independent source of the details.