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The Antikythera Mechanism
July 16th, 2007 at 3:09 am (Intriguing Antiquity)
This small device is something that absolutely stunned me when I came across it in a technology story on the New Zealand Herald website. The precision with which this was built is astounding, but the calculation and design that must have gone into its construction is what really gets me. How do you build the first analog computer on an island off the coast of Greece around 100 - 150BC… without using the Internet?!
Reading a bit more about the Antikythera Mechanism really fascinated me, things like this satisfy my very generalized interests in classical history, archaeology, gadgets and technology. One might theorize that the pictures would also appeal to the steampunk aesthetic in some. Here is what I found when doing more research:
About 75-80 BC a Roman merchant ship sunk on a popular trade route between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, most likely destined for Rome. That ship was carrying something that has taken extensive use of 21st century technology to completely identify; the Antikythera Mechanism.
Following a storm in 1900 that moved sponge divers from their normal diving places the wrecked ship was discovered off the Greek island of Antikythera. Elias Stadiatis, the sponge diver who found the wreck at 42 meters below sea level, returned to the surface exclaiming he’d found a heap of naked, dead women on the sea floor. The wreck contained a valuable assortment of Greek statues and other items.
One of these other items was an encrusted bronze lump. Eight months after this was recovered, the archaeologist, Valerios Stais, realized something unusual had been found - when a artefact originally thought to be rock broke apart to reveal a fragment of gear wheel. Further investigations found that there were three main fragments and dozens of smaller pieces.
Known now as the Antikythera Mechanism, the Greek device is an order of magnitude more complicated than anything else of its era or the following thousand years. The level of miniaturization and complexity of its parts are comparable to that of 18th century clockwork.
The complete mechanism is 33cm high, 17cm wide and 9cm thick, made of bronze and was originally mounted in a wooden frame. More than 2000 characters are inscribed on it. There are three main dials, one on the front and two on the back. Contained within it are upwards of 30 gear wheels, operated (most likely) by a crank handle.
The first reconstruction using information from the available fragments was by the British science historian, Derek J. De Solla Price during the early 1970s. More recently Allan George Bromley, Michael Wright and the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project have built on Price’s model with newer information from gamma ray and x-ray studies.
Price (with Charalampos Karakalos) was the first to theorize that the purpose of the mechanism was to calculate the motion of astronomical objects. This makes the Antikythera mechanism the first analog computer.
Michael Wright, from the Imperial College London, reinterpreted the work of Price between 2002 and 2005 and developed a radically different assembly for the mechanism’s 30 gears. His work is used as the basis for research by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, a team of Greek and British scientists which have been studying the mechanism in situ at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Their findings and photos of the mechanism’s fragments and of reconstructions can be found here, at the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project homepage.
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Wes said,
July 16, 2007 at 10:49 pm
It really is absolutely amazing, and shows what the individual is capable of in isolation. Not to suggest that this unknown inventor lived in a bubble, but the diffusion of knowledge was lesser, and there were fewer shoulders to stand on at the time of its creation. I think it also eludes to just how fragile scientific endevour can be, and how it needs to be nurtured and protected (within reason, of course).
I really think the importance of this device to human history has been gravely overlooked. I know many other discoveries had not been made at this point, particularly in terms of manufacturing process, but to have produced an analog computer in this era, and then to be lost for well over a millenia? It almost hurts to think about the possibility of how much has been lost. It makes a much stronger case for the equal diffusion of knowledge to all and sundry.
Charlie said,
July 10, 2008 at 2:52 am
By the internets :)
Kevin said,
July 10, 2008 at 5:08 am
and to think that the romans were most likely going to jsut toss this artifact aside in place of the more precious jewles that the ship was carring. typical roman, dont understand it, then its barbaric.
Milander said,
July 10, 2008 at 7:53 am
@wes said,
you’re missing the point, if this device was so valuable and unique it would never have been transported by sea. It is far more likely that there were many, a few hundred, of these devices well know and well used at the time.
Never forget that if all humanity were to disappear overnight our entire civlisation, all our works, buildings, literature, everything, would be completely destroyed to the extent that no visiting alien would ever know we had ever existed within 100, 000 years. The only evidence we ever existed at all would be the plaque left on the moon by apollo 11.
Might sound crazy but I firmly believe that there were other cultures and civilisations before us, possibly even reptilian given that they had 250 million years to rise and fall. It is entirely possible that all evidence of their existence has been erased from history.
Besides which there are stranger things out there than this device such as the crystal skulls, the ruins of Delathamaya and the battery of Baghdad.
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dinosuar said,
July 15, 2008 at 7:24 am
Hi wake up where is proof of finding ? who when what why you have been hoaxed and are spreading a lie cheers dinosuar
heitz said,
July 16, 2008 at 5:53 am
“How do you build the first analog computer on an island off the coast of Greece around 100 - 150BC… without using the Internet?!”
Are you serious?
That statement proves that people living thousands of years ago were far more intelligent than people like you, today.
There wer5e no corporations and mass media outlets that herded you to and fro and coerced you into doing what you think you wanted to do.
People used to think for themselves and crafted things to actually improve their environment… not go out and buy a saladshooter because the tv told them they need it, and because theyre too lazy to chop lettuce themselves, and then not even bother to use it cause theyve grown too fat on fast food and preservatives.
sasha said,
July 16, 2008 at 8:48 am
Hi Heitz,
No, I wasn’t being serious actually - it was something more akin to sarcasm. Feel free to make any more assumptions that might take your fancy with my next two paragraphs.
I’m not so sure whether people really thought for themselves more, in the time period that the Antikythera mechanism is thought to be constructed in, than the present. Why? Because of the constraints imposed by religion, education, communication technology, and social inequality. <– That is a generalised statement, not specific to 100 - 150 BC Greece, just to Europe & the Middle East around that time.
As for people in the past being “far more intelligent” than the likes of me, there have been and will always be people smarter than I. And you. Intelligence is distributed along a bell curve. If you’ve got any evidence to show that the average has decreased over time, then I’d love to see it as I was under the impression that over the last half century average IQ scores seem to be increasing.
Wes said,
July 17, 2008 at 1:40 am
@Milander: I’m not missing any point and your assumptions are misguided. For one, I’m pretty sure Greeks and pretty much the entirety of human civilisation was pretty limited in terms of transportation when this mechanism was new and shiny. Why *wouldn’t* you take it by a more direct sea route, than a treacherous land base path? It would be quicker and, dare I say it, more gentle on a fragile mechanism, weather permitting of course.
As for your spurious claim about evidence of our existence being erased without 100,000 years I have one word for you: Dinosaur. Look it up, we’ve been finding these remains for years and years on end now. And some of them are MILLIONS of years old. Wow, just wow.
If that doesn’t grab you though, I can enlighten you of stone age tools made by precursors to modern humans as well. The oldest stone tools are apparently 2.6 million years old. Gone in 100,000? I don’t think so.
dan said,
July 25, 2008 at 4:17 pm
wes
you’re missing the point, this could have been a proto type. maybe the person, or persons wanted to make sure it worked before they put it on the market, as they say. anyway they tested things way back then too.
Wes said,
July 25, 2008 at 7:11 pm
At some point did “you’re missing the point” become a staple diet of opening sentence of numskulls everywhere? Dan, your post has no point, at all. Even the original post, which I think your post is trying to reference also has no point. And maybe my maths is a little rusty but I think 0+0 = 0. At any rate, this is about -archaeology- not numbers. At the point this thing existed in history there is no evidence to show that there had been any item/find that came before it which was as complicated or well engineered for its suggested purposes. Let’s throw your “theory” a bone for a moment and say they manufactured 2000 of these things (an optimistic number given the period) it would STILL be a marvelous find due to the fact that from our current records it is still the first of its kind.
For further reference, look up “Mass Production” and its invention and then see how long it took to make things before the introduction of such machines.
Jeff said,
July 28, 2008 at 1:44 am
Hopefully, the great minds of old did not waste their efforts berating each other — throwing each others’ words back at one another and polluting the issue with biting personal jabs. Get beyond the he-said-she-said crap and take the higher road. There is a great find here, certainly worthy of analysis, discussion, and debate.
We can only guess at what earlier civilizations knew and were capable of by what we find. Our knowledge of them are mere assumptions based on perhaps a small fragment of findings. I’m sure we are only scratching the surface of knowledge lost to the ages. There is so much we don’t know about what we have found, but think about what we have not yet found, what we will never find, and the inaccurate conclusions we may draw upon those things we do find. On the whole, our knowledge of past civilizations will always be limited and therefore, our assumptions mostly incomplete and probably inaccurate.
Personally, I look forward to the continued search for early technology. I’m convinced that the more we look and the more evidence we find of early technology, the more our previously conceived notions will be proven false. The technology we have today is not the result of a single, continuous path of improvement, but rather a multitude of serial, parallel, and overlapping accomplishments that we continuously rediscover and use for our present-day purposes. The Antikythera mechanism is but one modern-day discovery of ancient technology that once again reshapes our thinking about ancient capabilities. This is cools stuff.
sasha said,
July 28, 2008 at 1:51 am
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for making such a fair and balanced comment :-)
“There is so much we don’t know about what we have found, but think about what we have not yet found, what we will never find, and the inaccurate conclusions we may draw upon those things we do find. On the whole, our knowledge of past civilizations will always be limited and therefore, our assumptions mostly incomplete and probably inaccurate.”
I also wonder about these things and agree with what you say about the present human society not having a complete ‘picture’ of what has gone before us. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if future societies have a distorted view of ours - even with the communication technology and massive amounts of stored data that we possess.
Giorgis said,
December 20, 2008 at 9:19 am
Guys, have faith in our selves. This device is not out of nothing. There were many famed devices, this is the only one that survived. Look up astrolabe and heron of Alexandria.
G