One hundred twenty years ago a Greek sponge diver off the coast of a small island named Antikythera in the Aegean Sea discovered a Roman shipwreck. The ship was filled with looted Greek treasures traveling from Rhodes to Rome to deliver its precious cargo. But misfortune caused the ship to sink.
Among the artifacts the divers found a calcified bronze lump, aggregated into a solid mass by 20 centuries of time. Originally thought to be an astrolabe, investigations by Derek de Solla Price in 1959 changed all of that. In an article for Scientific American titled "An Ancient Greek Computer". Further analysis by Price published in the Philadelphia American Philosophical Society's journal documented "Gears From the Greeks" using X-rays taken by Kr. Karakalos to show that this calculator was an astronomical calculator and predictor. The clockwork complexity was 1500 years ahead of its time, allowing accurate predictions of solar eclipses and the phase of the moon.
Since then more than a dozen working models of the Antikythera device have been made (with some speculation as to gearing). In 2015 Kyle MacInnis in an article "An Examination of the Antikythera Mechanism" describes the main features: "the presence of two spiral dials on one side representing the Saros (Eclipse Periodicity) and Metonic (Solar and Lunar Periodicity) cycles; on the opposing side, a third dial showing position of the Sun and the Moon as well as the Moon's phase, and calendrical information pertaining to the date such as month, zodiac, and day.
Join the adventure, download the article by Kyle MacInnis and watch the video:
You can see this video and all 10 episodes on YouTube starting at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE
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