Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Antikythera Mechanism


Did you see this in yesterday's newspaper? What is it? Turns out, after X-rays and much speculation, that this is a mechanical computer of "an accuracy thought to be impossible in 80 B.C." when the Greek ship it was on sank. It's about the size of a large book, and its "sophisticated technology" was thought not to exist for another 1,000 years. Its wheels and gears make it a portable orrery of the sky.

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6 comments:

mareymercy said...

Awesome - I'm going to send this to my husband; he loves hearing about stuff like this.

silverlight said...

Oh, yeah. I saw the entire story about this find, earlier this year. On the History channel. It was excavated from a water salvage in the Medditerrain Ocean. They now have a real working model from it.
If you go to the History Ch. site. You can purchase the video or DVD.

Anonymous said...

Wow! My husband and I love this kind of story, I will have to show it to him. Very cool!

slickdpdx said...

Very cool!

AscenderRisesAbove said...

fantastic find!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing this. Thank you thank you thank. Now this is the kind of news that is worth knowing. This is wonderful.