Ancient Greek computer!

[robagar]

A rather interesting story from The Register:

"A bronze Greek device constructed in around 80BC could be the world's oldest computer, joint British-Greek research seems to suggest. The "Antikythera Mechanism" - consisting more than 30 bronze dials and wheels - was recovered from the wreck of a cargo ship off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1900, the Scotsman reports. Its exact purpose was unknown, although a previous theory centred on it being used to calculate the movement of the planets then known to the Greeks: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
The researchers from the universities of Cardiff, Athens and Thessalonika now believe they are close to cracking the mystery, by bringing to bear very modern X-ray technology which has revealed a previously-hidden Greek inscriptions which may confirm the planetary hypothesis."

Full text + images here.

[astroron (Ron)]

It looks like an old steering wheel!, but they didn't have cars in those days but it is a very interesting story all the same.
Thanks for posting

Ummmm, doesnt the ancient Chinese Abacus count? It predates this by only a few thousand years. Im guessing it's something to do with navigation and nothing to do with calculating numbers. Interesting though.

[robagar]

I guess an abacus is really just a counting device which doesn't compute anything in itself. The calculations are done by the person holding it. But this device (if it is an analogue computer) actually does the sums.

[h0ughy (David)]

but technology is technology, and at the time whatever it was it would have looked as impressive as whipping out the paocket PC or the palm and doing a calculation to someone who never seen one before. Lets see when the doco comes out?

[slice of heaven]

Nice find Rob.
The knowledge of ancient astronomers always impresses me more than modern day astronomy. In those times , that device would have been more like a super computer.

This link shows more detailed workings and pics of the device.
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/wha...400/kyth1.html
antikythera1-1

[robagar]

cool, thanks for the link slice o' heaven. Truly amazing that something so sophisticated was made over 2000 years ago. Those greeks were pretty clever, an error of 0.001% on the year/lunar month ratio ain't bad at all.

I love ancient astronomy too - must be from being taken to Stonehenge, Avebury and other stone circles and megaliths when I was little

[robagar]

http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/ is the research project website. Not much content there yet, but the 3D animation of the CT scan is pretty cool.

[robagar]

... and there's a very good 3D interactive simulation here