The Antikythera Mechanism: Physical and Intellectual Salvage from the 1st Century B.C.

USNA Eleventh Naval History Symposium ^ | 1995 | Rob S. Rice

[SunkenCiv]

The Antikythera mechanism was an arrangement of calibrated differential gears inscribed and configured to produce solar and lunar positions in synchronization with the calendar year. By rotating a shaft protruding from its now-disintegrated wooden case, its owner could read on its front and back dials the progressions of the lunar and synodic months over four-year cycles. He could predict the movement of heavenly bodies regardless of his local government's erratic calendar. From the accumulated inscriptions and the position of the gears and year-ring, Price deduced that the device was linked closely to Geminus of Rhodes, and had been built on that island off the southern coast of Asia Minor circa 87 B.C. Besides the inscriptions' near-identity to Geminus's surviving book, the presence of distinctive Rhodian amphorae among other items from the wreck supported Price's deduction and date once Virginia Grace had re-examined the pottery recovered in 1901.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~ped/teachadmin/histsci/htmlform/lect4.html

The history of calculating machines post-Leibniz can - admittedly with hindsight - be seen as a series of ideas and technological advances that progressively dealt with these lacunae. With the sole exception of the final point, ideas relating to all of these aspects were developed in the 19th century. In this lecture we shall examine the work of, principally, three people - Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834); Charles Babbage (1791-1871); and George Boole (1815-64) - and their contribution to the development of computational devices.

[SunkenCiv]

"That the device was made much later than the date of the shipwreck," isn't possible. The device was inside a concretion that was part of the wreck debris. Interestingly enough, off Turkey some years ago an "age of sail" wreck was found near some scary rock; under it was a sandwich of two other wrecks, the oldest being ancient. Each had hit the rock in turn, probably in the night, and each sank to rest on the same bit of seabottom.

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[SunkenCiv]

I was tryin' to tiptoe around that one, just write it so others would infer it. ;') Navigation today relies a lot on GPS, as well as tried and fairly true methods. Other problems (and these are major) for earlier navigators would be reliance on natural objects (sun and moon, almost exclusively) for nighttime illumination; the need to establish an accurate circumference of the Earth (interesting that it was done pretty well in Ptolemaic Egypt by Eratosthenes, during one of the periods of brisk east-west trade); piracy (a big problem); mutiny (actually related to piracy); lack of currency standards (this would be intermittent, and as trade increased, would shrink in significance); language barriers; non-decimal number systems (math being used to calculate position and whatnot)...

[SunkenCiv]

Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[SunkenCiv]

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A gifted faker name Alexander founded an oracle in a backwater on the south shore of the Black Sea. Here, for stiff prices, a talking serpent he had rigged up answered questions for the local hayseeds... (p 135)
	Travel in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson

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[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

An update, and well worth reading. Some of the numerous earlier FR topics pertain to these new finds.

Was the Antikythera Mechanism the world's first computer?
by John Seabrook
The New Yorker
May 14, 2007

Andrew Ramsey, X-Tek's computer-tomography specialist, who was operating the viewer, zoomed around inside the 3-D representation until he found the right slice. Written on the side of the gear were the letters "M" and "E" -- "ME." Was this the maker's mark? Or could "ME" mean "Part 45"? ("ME" is the symbol for forty-five in ancient Greek.) Freeth joked that Mike Edmunds had scratched his initials on the fragment. Others suggested that this particular piece of the Mechanism could have been recycled, and that the "ME" was left over from some earlier device.

Altogether, the team salvaged about a thousand new letters and inscriptions from the Mechanism -- doubling the number available to Price. Together with earlier imaging, the new inscriptions support theories that both Price and Wright had advanced. On Fragment E, for example, the group read "235 divisions on the spiral." "I was amazed," Freeth said. "This completely vindicated Price's idea of the Metonic cycle of two hundred and thirty-five lunar months on the upper back dial." They also read words explaining that on the extremity of "the pointer stands a little golden sphere," which probably refers to a representation of the sun on the sun pointer that went around the zodiac dial at the front of the Mechanism. Wright had proposed that the rings of the back dials were made in the form of spirals; the word eliki, meaning "spiral," can be seen on Fragment E. On Fragment 22, the number "223" has been observed, pointing to the use of the saros dial as an eclipse indicator.

..."So you think that the letters 'ME' -- "

"Precisely," Wright interjected. "I think they must relate to whatever that bit of metal was used for before."

[Mike Fieschko]

Other recent articles on the 'net:

Ancient Moon 'computer' revisited (BBC, 29 November 2006),

Decoding an ancient computer, (C|Net, November 30, 2006).

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.

[BenLurkin]

It was found on a 1st century wreck — but it could just as easily have originated fifteen hundred years later and arrived on the wreck by being tossed off the side of a passing galleon.

Probably by the owner’s ex-wife.

[RightWhale]

On another thread, or several, the death of the music CD was noted. Music recordings have been around since Edison, so this is a relatively new phenomenon—recorded music. But wait! Mechanical devices for playing music have been around far longer than that. This antikythera thing is merely one mechanical thing from an age when they were making all kinds of mechanical things including things that play music. So, the CD goes away, but recorded music is ancient and will continue.

[norton]

Looks good, you’d recommend it?

[SunkenCiv]

Definitely! I think I’ve got an Amazon review of it, not sure about the level of detail I did though.

Professor Lionel Casson’s Acceptance Speech to the AIA, January 8, 2005
Volume 58 Number 2, March/April 2005
http://www.archaeology.org/0503/etc/casson.html

[norton]

Thanks,
Amazon has me on speed dial since I retired.

[SunkenCiv]

Ok, I checked, and I did review it: “Time to take a trip, June 14, 2000 by Holy Olio”.

[Petronski]

The most amazing thing about the Antikythera Mechanism, for my money, is that some clever geek over at slashdot actually got the thing to boot linux. Amazing.

[SunkenCiv]

Probably by the owner’s ex-wife.

Hey, at least you're not bitter.

[SunkenCiv]

Didn’t those originate at the same time? ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp038-2_cremona.htm

...As a musical instrument, the organ has ancient Judaic roots. The magrephah, the original organ, is described in the Talmud (Arachin tractate) as a bellows-operated pipe-organ with ten different sized reed-pipes, all pierced with ten holes and keyed to a reverberatory box. The magrephah emitted “all the hundred sounds of which our rabbis speak.”3

The Babylonian Bible (Tamid tractate), describes one of its uses: A Levite musician “took the Magrephah and sounded it… The priest who heard its sound knew that his brother Levites had entered to sing, and he hastened to come.”

After the destruction of the Second Temple, a ban was placed on the use in services of musical instruments giving forth “joyful sounds” until the Temple was restored. Among the many Judaic musical practices the Christians adopted and continued was the use of the organ. Some of the early church fathers campaigned to ban the use of this “Jewish instrument” because it would seduce Christians to the “hated religion.” Ironically, some contemporary Judaic religious groups disdain to use the organ in services because of its Christian association.

[SunkenCiv]

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