One of the most startling and downright bizarre objects ever found in human history is represented here in a rendering of a polished wooden box with an open lid, showing cascades of bronze gears. It is the Antikythera Mechanism, the first analogue computer ever built. And for nearly 2,000 years, it lay at the bottom of the sea, so astonishingly advanced it took decades for its examiners to accept that it was not a forgery.
Hauling it Out of the Depths by Accident
It started with a shipwreck and a group of commercial sponge divers off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in 1900.
The boat – date:
c 70-60 BCE – sank in about 150 feet of water, its hold full of statues made of marble and bronze, jewellery, and pottery. But nestled among these familiar, if spectacular, spoils was something utterly unlike anything else found in the wreck: a chunk of corroded bronze about the size of a shoebox and festooned with tiny gears and dials. Taxilamuseum: Wonderful Museums
Back then, nobody had any idea what they had found. Just a curious bronze lump until some time in 1901, when someone discovered a gear tucked away among the encrusting dirt. The various bits and pieces remained in a storage room at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens until May 18, 1902, when a visitor – one Valerios Stais, a professor of archaeology – was shown the corroded lump; he saw the arrangement of interlocking gears and visible Greek lettering and, a few days later, word was sent that an “important discovery” had been made in Athens. PunjabTaxilamuseum
A Century of Decoding
What came next wasn’t an epiphany so much as a process of patient, painstaking deconstruction, rather akin to carefully trying to piece together an elaborate jigsaw puzzle with bits of missing pieces, except the pieces are intricate teeth of metal instead of shards of stone.
Researchers from Britain applied X-ray and gamma-ray photography techniques to the fragments of the Mechanism in 1951. In 1959, their examination enabled the researchers to postulate what they concluded was a complex astronomical calculating device, and subsequently Britain’s Derek de Solla Price published the breakthrough research that brought this concept to wide public and academic attention: The Antikythera Mechanism was what he called “a calendar computer” designed to predict the phases of the Moon, the locations of the major stars and known planets, and the precise times of eclipses dozens of years in the future. PunjabInduscaravan
However, it wasn’t until 2002, and a British team applying a technique called linear tomography, which gave more detailed internal images, that more details emerged. That further breakthrough came in 2005 with an international team of British and Greek researchers who used the sophisticated ‘microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography’ to examine the rear half of the Machine, yet much about the front remained elusive. The examination had led to another startling realisation about the Device: that in addition to calculating the movement of heavenly bodies, it could also predict eclipses! Punjab + 2
Calculating Eclipses and Timing the Olympics
What all the work over decades revealed is a truly monumental undertaking: a complex of interlocking gears displaying the positions of the Moon and Sun-and presumably the visible planets-as they move through the 365-day ecliptic, alongside date displays for the Egyptian calendar and a Greek lunisolar calendar, plus date predictions for both solar and lunar eclipses. Traveler Trails
As the crank is turned, gears within the Mechanism turn and move pointers on the dial, displaying the planetary positions for the user selected date, a highly accurate arrangement that included in its calculation of the Moon’s path complex adjustments that took into account the fact the Moon’s orbit is not round but an ellipse – something the builders somehow discovered independently of any written tradition that would even suggest such a concept to them, something which wouldn’t be replicated in European horology for over 1500 years! PunjabPunjab
Not all of the Machine was so abstract and celestial. It also included a calendar of athletic games such as the Olympics, which meant that the Mechanical device doubled as a tool to keep track of celestial and terrestrial cycles in human history: what it means is that one device the size of a shoe box was capable of predicting not only of lunar eclipses, but of when the next Olympiad will arrive!. Wonderful Museums
Why the Discovery Revolutionised Our Understanding of Ancient Technology
The reason why the discovered device is so famous is the fact that, according to the then-established historical and scholarly traditions, a similar intricate astronomical machine should not have existed until the 14th century CE, with the invention of the astronomical clocks in Europe. The very fact of the Antikythera Mechanism’s existence seemed almost impossible to the experts; to them, there could be no such machinery so far prior in history! Only once the function and complexity of the object was identified was there general agreement amongst experts about its ancient origin, stunning all historians who previously believed that mechanical clockwork had only just begun developing in the 14th century. Wonderful Museums, Taxilamuseum
Indeed the discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism fits remarkably closely into the broader temporal and cultural scope of the Gandharan works previously discussed in this article; the Device dates to the second century BCE, about the same time that artists working in the studios of Gandhara, influenced by Greek artistic styles and techniques, produced their unique works depicting Buddha with Apollo-like facial features. At the same time as those skilled artisans crafted depictions in stone and stucco, anonymous makers elsewhere in the Hellenistic world were using bronze to produce remarkably precise geared mechanical instruments such as would not be seen again in the Western world for more than a millennium, works stemming from the same great wave of technical and artistic skill that spread throughout Hellenistic culture, manifesting itself at different ends of the known world. Grokipedia
Who Was the Master Craftsperson?
Unfortunately, the actual builder of this masterpiece remains unknown. Price himself once considered if the Mechanism might have been built by Archimedes in his native Syracuse but ultimately settled on what he referred to as the creation of “an anonymous mechanician of Rhodes” – a craftsman whose name has unfortunately been lost to history. Nevertheless, its unknown creator makes this complex object all the more fascinating. Induscaravan
Read more at: https://www.discovernewsdaily24.com/taxila-museum-two-thousand-years-in-a-single-garden/
Far From Whole
And one needs to keep in mind that what has been recovered to date and used to build modern replicas – such as this illustrated model – is in reality a small part of the original whole. Only 82 major pieces out of the original are known today, meaning about a third of the complete object survives, and about 30 of the originally anticipated 30 or 37 metal gear wheels are still accounted for. After being retrieved, the machine burst open, revealing about 30 smaller coins. Only one-third of the original Mechanism survives, divided into 82 fragments ranging from A to G, and 1 to 75. PakistantoursguideTripadvisor
That is the reason why a variety of different models of the original Antikythera Mechanism have been developed in the intervening decades, and this image is an “exploded view” showing where each gear wheel is located. But as the 21st century progresses, a variety of scientists continue to seek evidence to fill out the blank areas of the original 30-37 gears! Paradigm Shift
Building the Replica – Testing the Ancient Device Today
Building replicas, even with the benefit of modern materials and technology, has proven a complicated feat of its own. The first proper recreation of the Machine by a team of British researchers, finished in 2008, matched the quality of gears built in 19th-century Europe. Ironically, even 21st-century clock makers struggle with manufacturing the non-linear gears needed to compensate for the variations in the complex orbits of astronomical objects. Recently, in 2021, UK researchers used recent scans to construct an all 3-dimensional online replica of the device that appeared similar to earlier reconstructions. PunjabPunjab
Why This Marvel Continues to Shock Us
And that’s what’s so fascinating to place alongside the other Hellenistic objects we have discussed throughout this series: these cultures were by no means crude. Indeed, the further we peer into stone or stucco or tiny slivers of bronze just a millimetre wide, the more and more we are struck by the sophistication, innovation, and intellectual audaciousness these cultures displayed. The history books are far from closed, and many future discoveries are sure to astound us in turn. IHA News
This is why an illustration such as the one here, offering an exploded view of all of its parts, from every bronze plate to every delicate gear, is essential: The original Antikythera Mechanism, today, behind a pane of protective glass, too corroded and fragile to ever be fully examined by the naked eye, is utterly mysterious in its complexity.
See Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyU4cZor_Gg
