Secrets of Antikythera mechanism

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Scientists unlock new secrets of Antikythera mechanism
Leigh Dayton, science writer | July 31, 2008

AN ancient device retrieved from the wreck of a 1st century BC Roman merchant vessel not only predicted astronomical events like the equinox and phases of the moon, it also recorded the time and place of the original Olympic games

The claim comes from British, Greek and US researchers who have uncovered and interpreted previously unknown components of the Antikythera Mechanism, discovered in 1901 by Greek divers collecting sponges in the Mediterranean Sea.

The mechanism is about the size of a wall clock, with bronze gearwheels, dials and inscriptions on both sides. It has long-puzzled experts, keen to determine where it was made and precisely what it did.




"We knew that this 2100-year-old ancient Greek mechanism calculated complex cycles of mathematical astronomy. It really surprised us to discover that it also showed the four-year cycle of ancient Greek games, including the Olympic Games," said team member Tony Freeth, a mathematician and filmmaker with Images First in London.

Writing overnight in the journal Nature, Dr Freeth and his international colleagues debunked the previous belief that the intricate device was made in the Eastern Mediterranean, probably Rhodes.

They did so by using 3D X-ray technology to read all the month names on a dial for the 19-year "Metonic" calendar, a system that combined solar and lunar years.

"These month names are from the Corinthian family of months, suggesting an origin on the other side of the ancient Greek world," said team member Alexander Jones with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York city.

Professor Jones said that while the mechanism was possibly built in Syracuse in Sicily - home of Archimedes - it was "almost certainly" made many decades after the great scientist had died.

The X-ray scans also revealed details of another "dial" on the back of the device. Previously thought to calculate the 76-year Callippic cycle, instead it followed the four-year cycles of the Olympiad and the associated Panhellenic Games.

The team claimed the mechanism is one of the most important machines ever found.

"It tells us of a revolution in human thought in ancient Greece. (It's) the earliest known example of a machine for making calculations, of a machine for predicting the future,"' said Dr Freeth.

"This is a truly extraordinary idea, a design of pure genius."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 17,00.html