Antikythera mechanism

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psychicpredictions

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The Antikythera mechanism (pronounced /ˌæntɨkɨˈθɪərə/ ANT-i-ki-THEER-ə or pronounced /ˌæntɨˈkɪθərə/ ANT-i-KITH-ə-rə) is an ancient mechanical computerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-Washington_Post-1 designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–01 from the Antikythera wreck.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-2 Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BCE.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-3 The degree of mechanical sophistication is comparable to a 19th century Swiss clock.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-4 Technological artifacts of similar complexity and workmanship did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clockswere built in Europe.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-insearchoflosttime-5
Jacques-Yves Cousteau visited the wreck for the last time in 1978,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-6 but found no additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the most recent study of the mechanism said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#cite_note-Guardian-8
The device is displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, accompanied by a reconstruction made and donated to the museum by Derek de Solla Price. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York, and in Kassel, Germany.
 
I have seen the reconstruction at the Mountain View museum (they also have a Babbage Differential Engine built according to the original specs) and it is a wonderful piece of technology, astonishing for its age.
 
bob x said:
I have seen the reconstruction at the Mountain View museum (they also have a Babbage Differential Engine built according to the original specs) and it is a wonderful piece of technology, astonishing for its age.
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did you mean the Babbage Difference Engine?
that's the prototype for the first computer, right?

although this one above, the Antikythera mechanism, has been associated with computers, it has also been associated with time travel.

nothing has been proven yet though. all theses theories are still speculations.
 
Explanation: What is it? It was found at the bottom of the sea aboard an ancient Greek ship. Its seeming complexity has prompted decades of study, although many of its functions remained unknown. Recent X-rays of the device have now confirmed the nature of the Antikythera mechanism, and discovered several surprising functions. The Antikythera mechanism has been discovered to be a mechanical computer of an accuracy thought impossible in 80 BC, when the ship that carried it sunk. Such sophisticated technology was not thought to be developed by humanity for another 1,000 years. Its wheels and gears create a portable orrery of the sky that predicted star and planet locations as well as lunar and solar eclipses. The Antikythera mechanism, shown above, is 33 centimeters high and similar in size to a large book.
 
thank you.

a question, do you believe in Atlantis?
i go by far hypothesizing that such old inventions come from them.

best regards!
 
psychicpredictions said:
did you mean the Babbage Difference Engine?
that's the prototype for the first computer, right?
Click to expand...
The Difference Engine was a special-purpose computer which would crank out (literally: you turned this huge crank to make the wheels go round!) trigonometric or logarithmic or other mathematical functions (anything that can be approximated with a "Taylor series": you "programmed" it by setting some of the wheels to the Taylor coefficients) to a high degree of accuracy (Babbage was bothered by discrepancies among the tables that had been produced, from hand computation of course, for these various functions).

The Analytical Engine was supposed to be a general-purpose computer, capable of carrying out any rigorously defined sequence of mathematical operations (any "algorithm" in the technical term). Babbage never finished the specs for the Analytical Engine; and since he was so excited about the project, it distracted him from actually building a Difference Engine (the Mountain View machine and another one in England were built precisely to test whether the specs for the Difference Engine really worked). His friend Ada Lovelace (daughter of the poet Lord Byron) is credited with writing the first "computer program" (an algorithmic set of instructions which would have told the Analytic Engine how to find the "Fibonacci numbers"; if, of course, Babbage had ever gotten around to finishing the Analytic Engine).
psychicpredictions said:
although this one above, the Antikythera mechanism, has been associated with computers, it has also been associated with time travel.
Click to expand...
I find that style of thought very insulting. What it says is that you don't believe ancient people could possibly have been smart; only modern people are smart; if ancient people had something remarkable, they must have cheated somehow and gotten help from aliens or Atlanteans or the future.
 
bob x said:
The Difference Engine was a special-purpose computer which would crank out (literally: you turned this huge crank to make the wheels go round!) trigonometric or logarithmic or other mathematical functions (anything that can be approximated with a "Taylor series": you "programmed" it by setting some of the wheels to the Taylor coefficients) to a high degree of accuracy (Babbage was bothered by discrepancies among the tables that had been produced, from hand computation of course, for these various functions).

The Analytical Engine was supposed to be a general-purpose computer, capable of carrying out any rigorously defined sequence of mathematical operations (any "algorithm" in the technical term). Babbage never finished the specs for the Analytical Engine; and since he was so excited about the project, it distracted him from actually building a Difference Engine (the Mountain View machine and another one in England were built precisely to test whether the specs for the Difference Engine really worked). His friend Ada Lovelace (daughter of the poet Lord Byron) is credited with writing the first "computer program" (an algorithmic set of instructions which would have told the Analytic Engine how to find the "Fibonacci numbers"; if, of course, Babbage had ever gotten around to finishing the Analytic Engine).

I find that style of thought very insulting. What it says is that you don't believe ancient people could possibly have been smart; only modern people are smart; if ancient people had something remarkable, they must have cheated somehow and gotten help from aliens or Atlanteans or the future.
Click to expand...

Not at all. I was simply speculating. Great writers and renowned person in the past have not deemed the idea of a city such as Atlantis to be false.

For instance, n Plato's account, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune."

The philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, is often cited as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact.

Proclus, Marcellus, Zoticus, among others also claims the same.

The search for this city is neither conclusive nor has been stopped. Similarly, it would not be an insult to associate such with this, since the mechanism was found by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea near the island of Antikythera, a Greek island community in the Ionian Sea just above the Mediterranean Sea where most of the historically proposed locations are in.
 
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