Antikythera Mechanism Rebuilt/'Rebooted'

[Le Goat]

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/images/2008/07/30/olympiadial_original.jpg
A British museum curator has built a working replica of a 2,000-year-old Greek machine that has been called the world's first computer.
A dictionary-size assemblage of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock, the Antikythera mechanism was used for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/worlds-first-co.html).
The original 81 shards of the Antikythera were recovered from under the sea (near the Greek island of Antikythera) in 1902, rusted and clumped together in a nearly indecipherable mass. Scientists dated it to 150 B.C. Such craftsmanship wouldn't be seen for another 1,000 years — but its purpose was a mystery for decades.
Many scientists have worked since the 1950s to piece together the story, with the help of some very sophisticated imaging technology (http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2006/11/imaging_the_ant.html) in recent years, including X-ray and gamma-ray imaging and 3-D computer modeling.
Now, though, it has been rebuilt. As is almost always the way with these things, it was an amateur who cracked it. Michael Wright, a former curator at the Science Museum in London, has built a replica of the Antikythera, which works perfectly.
In the video from New Scientist below, Wright shows how the machine works.
In short, Antikythera's user interface is deceptively simple, operated by a simple knob on the side. This conceals the intricacy within, amounting to a complex mathematical model, tracking the movements of planetary bodies and incorporating a series of submechanisms to account for the eccentricities of their rotation.
A dial on the faceplace featured the Greek zodiac and an Egyptian calendar; pointers showed the location of the moon and the five planets known at the time. On the machine's back, an upper dial shows a 19-year calendar (matching the solunar cycle) and the timing of upcoming Olympic games. A lower dial shows a 76-year cycle (when the Olympic and solunar cycles coincide) and indicates the months in which lunar and solar eclipses can be expected.
According to New Scientist, this is the first working model of the Antikythera computer to include all of the device's known features. And, like the original machine, it has been built of recycled metal plates. That's right: The Antikythera mechanism is not only the world's oldest computer, it's also the world's first green computer.


Always one of my favorite mysteries. Such precision and beauty long before what we think it should've been.

ZrfMFhrgOFc

[freegood]

How fast could it download porn?

[Gary_Busey]

It's a pretty simple machine by today's standards. Must've been fucking amazing back in the day.

[Le Goat]

1.21 niggawatts!!!

[Claydon]

yah this is pretty sweet, i have read about this thing countless times.

[taters]

Its a gawdamned calender folks. Lets just say it. Calender. Complex way for primitive peoples to tell day it was, back before they fully understood the exact time period of a year.

Not that its not cool, and that was a vastly important thing, but it does the same thing that those giant stone henge rocks do, and that native americans who hadnt invented the wheel did with bits of strong, only smaller with much more moving parts.

Kinda like an ipod for ancient greeks.

[Yelram]

Its a gawdamned calender folks. Lets just say it. Calender. Complex way for primitive peoples to tell day it was, back before they fully understood the exact time period of a year.

Not that its not cool, and that was a vastly important thing, but it does the same thing that those giant stone henge rocks do, and that native americans who hadnt invented the wheel did with bits of strong, only smaller with much more moving parts.

Kinda like an ipod for ancient greeks.

Exact time period of a year? You really think they didnt know that?

"
The Egyptian Calendar

The ancient Egyptians used a calendar with 12 months of 30 days each, for a total of 360 days per year. About 4000 B.C. they added five extra days at the end of every year to bring it more into line with the solar year.1 These five days became a festival because it was thought to be unlucky to work during that time.
The Egyptians had calculated that the solar year was actually closer to 3651/4 days, but instead of having a single leap day every four years to account for the fractional day (the way we do now), they let the one-quarter day accumulate. After 1,460 solar years, or four periods of 365 years, 1,461 Egyptian years had passed. This means that as the years passed, the Egyptian months fell out of sync with the seasons, so that the summer months eventually fell during winter. Only once every 1,460 years did their calendar year coincide precisely with the solar year.
In addition to the civic calendar, the Egyptians also had a religious calendar that was based on the 291/2-day lunar cycle and was more closely linked with agricultural cycles and the movements of the stars.
1. The correct figures are lunation: 29 d, 12 h, 44 min, 2.8 sec (29.530585 d); solar year: 365 d, 5 h, 48 min, 46 sec (365.242216 d); 12 lunations: 354 d, 8 h, 48 min, 34 sec (354.3671 d).
Lunar Calendars

During antiquity the lunar calendar that best approximated a solar-year calendar was based on a 19-year period, with 7 of these 19 years having 13 months. In all, the period contained 235 months. Still using the lunation value of 291/2 days, this made a total of 6,9321/2 days, while 19 solar years added up to 6,939.7 days, a difference of just one week per period and about five weeks per century.
Even the 19-year period required adjustment, but it became the basis of the calendars of the ancient Chinese, Babylonians, Greeks, and Jews. This same calendar was also used by the Arabs, but Muhammad later forbade shifting from 12 months to 13 months, so that the Islamic calendar now has a lunar year of about 354 days. As a result, the months of the Islamic calendar, as well as the Islamic religious festivals, migrate through all the seasons of the year.
The Roman Calendar

When Rome emerged as a world power, the difficulties of making a calendar were well known, but the Romans complicated their lives because of their superstition that even numbers were unlucky. Hence their months were 29 or 31 days long, with the exception of February, which had 28 days. However, four months of 31 days, seven months of 29 days, and one month of 28 days added up to only 355 days. Therefore the Romans invented an extra month called Mercedonius of 22 or 23 days. It was added every second year.
Even with Mercedonius, the Roman calendar eventually became so far off that Julius Caesar, advised by the astronomer Sosigenes, ordered a sweeping reform. 46 B.C. was made 445 days long by imperial decree, bringing the calendar back in step with the seasons. Then the solar year (with the value of 365 days and 6 hours) was made the basis of the calendar. The months were 30 or 31 days in length, and to take care of the 6 hours, every fourth year was made a 366-day year. Moreover, Caesar decreed the year began with the first of January, not with the vernal equinox in late March.
This calendar was named the Julian calendar, after Julius Caesar, and it continues to be used by Eastern Orthodox churches for holiday calculations to this day. However, despite the correction, the Julian calendar is still 111/2 minutes longer than the actual solar year, and after a number of centuries, even 111/2 minutes adds up."



Its idiots like you that think that "primitive" civilizations were incapable of some of the acts of genius they have produced. This isnt ONE calender, this is like 4 calenders in one, with a fucking olympic reminder, lunar cycles accounted for, and the movements of the heavenly bodies through the zodiac.I know you can buy one made in china for pennies now, but that fact is inconsequential.

[vasili denisov]

Its a gawdamned calender folks. Lets just say it. Calender. Complex way for primitive peoples to tell day it was, back before they fully understood the exact time period of a year.

Well, the calendar is simply a record of a simple man made organization. It could be likened to a geographic map which takes external data and imposes structures and borders on it. This is something of a different class, able to produce the location of an astronomical object through knowledge of past observations, the object's position something that can be anticipated by this model, though not imposed by the model. It also fulfills a definition of a computer which a simple calendar or clock does not; a different input generates a different non-random future state.

[freegood]

For the sake of argument, we take the calender and time keeping for granted, but without it time wouldn't be worth shit, let alone money.

We'd still be grasping for spears and drums.

[Morfin]

taters:

Here is the first post you made in this thread.

Its a gawdamned calender folks. Lets just say it. Calender. Complex way for primitive peoples to tell day it was, back before they fully understood the exact time period of a year.

Not that its not cool, and that was a vastly important thing, but it does the same thing that those giant stone henge rocks do, and that native americans who hadnt invented the wheel did with bits of strong, only smaller with much more moving parts.

Kinda like an ipod for ancient greeks.

Despite what you have been trying to convince us since you posted this, the bottom line is that you denigrated this machine as a "calendar." That is absurd and is like saying that a computer is an adding machine. Yes, it is a calendar, but it is so much more. Much more than what "those giant stone henge rocks do."

It is obnoxiously idiotic post, despite your later attempts to change the issue as to what you meant by "primitive" or where bananas are grown. To me, I could care less about those later posts. It was the first post that showed 1) your ignorance; and 2) your arrogance.

And as Hoser said, you have to look in the mirror when virtually everyone on GMF thinks you're an idiot.

[Claydon]

only tater could make a thread about an extraordinary piece of technology from the greeks into a steaming pile of shit.

(slow clap)

[Yelram]

Finally, a near reasonable response that actually focuses on real facts and history.

I would argue it depends on whether you mean the loose definition of a solar year (which we on our leap yeared 12 month calender follow a modern version of even today) or the specific one, which is like 1 day longer than our 365 day year, and does not accurately follow the lunar calender year.

The greek calender was a lunar, not a solar one, was it not (I honestly dont remember from astrology)?


You are so fucking dumb dude, did you not read the part where it says "solunar"? Can you guess what that means? Lunar cycles happen one way, the solar cycles happen another, and all of the planets align differently, this thing predicts the movements of ALL OF THEM, plus the overlapping 76 year cycle where they coincide. Calling it a "primitive" calender is pure and total idiocy. You have to have the IQ of a retarded cat to not understand why your statements in this thread have been totally off base. Follow up
Greek = Not very primitive
Bananas = are grown in South Africa
Not all blacks are inferior, but tater certainly is.

[Insomniac]

This thread needs more racism

NAO!


Fuck the Romans for basically setting back civilization a thousand years by directly and indirectly killing Greek genius and stifling all technological creativity that didn't help them kill people or take water somewhere.

Yeah, I watched and read Terry Jones' Barbarians.

[Archangel]

Um, just wondering: When, in the course of Western civilisation, was creativity not dedicated to bringing about the death of your fellow man?

[Insomniac]

When some Greek fellow sat down and invented steam power for use in a toy.

Hey man, gunpowder wasn't invented to blow stuff up. The Chinese had to figure that out later. For war, yeah, of course, but no one was clamoring for that until they already had it.

The Romans thought necessity was the mother of invention, when really inventions find their own necessities.

[Archangel]

The Romans' impact on the creative process was its integration into economy. Ever since then, you invent shit primarily to get paid. And nobody pays better than the military...

[Skybase]

I'm damned impressed. It's amazing for how far we think we've come what types of things we keep digging up from the past. Wonder when we'll uncover that UFO that they developed?

Lost civilizations. . .huh.

[Archangel]

In the interest of the News Section, all the off topic stuff that has happened here has been moved to another - locked - thread.

[Archangel]

And by the way, the fascination that this thing holds is due to the same reason why an IWC mechanical watch costs $15,000, while a far more modern, advanced, digital quartz Casio costs $150.

[Spanky]

Sweet clock.