[Hobby]

The world’s oldest surviving mechanical calculator is the Antikythera Mechanism . The amazing device was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1900.

The device is now fragmented by the passage of time, but when intact it would have appeared as a box housing dozens of finely machined bronze gear wheels. When manually rotated by a handle, the gears’ span dials on the exterior showing the phases of the Moon, the timing of lunar eclipses, and the positions of the five planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) at different times of the year. This even accounted for their retrograde motion – an illusionary change in the movement of planets through the sky.

We don’t know who built it, but it dates to sometime between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, and may even have been the work of Archimedes. Gearing technology with the sophistication of the Antikythera Mechanism was not seen again for a thousand years.

Sadly, the vast majority of these works were lost to history and our scientific awakening was delayed by millennia. As a tool for introducing scientific measurement, the techniques of Eratosthenes are relatively easy to perform and require no special equipment, allowing those just beginning their interest in science to understand by doing, experimenting and, ultimately, following in the footsteps of some of the first scientists.

[Linda Lee]

That is such a cool video. What an insightful 8 minutes 🙂 I wish it had not broken in the voyage.

[Linda Lee]

Antikythera Mechanism! I went there when I visited Greece. What a fascinating museum with cool stuff such as the mechanical calculator. If anyone has the ability and interest, they should definitely visit the museum.

[Achilles Heel]

Looks fantastic, wish I could go there.

[Author]

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