Little Delving
Beyond Here There Be Dragons
Those Crafty Old Greeks
Dec 02, 2006 12:20 PM Filed in:
Fun &
Interesting
A Device Light-Years Ahead Of Its Time
11/30/2006 USA TODAY
By Dan Vergano
The "Anti-kythera Mechanism," an ancient Greek astronomical calculator dating to about 100 B.C., possessed a technical sophistication centuries ahead of its time, an international research team reports. "The actual design is superb, almost jaw-dropping," says study leader Mike Edmunds of the United Kingdom's Cardiff University. The mechanism is now at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Badly corroded and shattered and an object of fascination for scholars since its recovery in 1902 from a Roman shipwreck, the device "stands as a witness to the extraordinary technological potential of ancient Greece," the study concludes.
Released today at an Athens conference and in the journal Nature, digital imagery and X-ray tomography analysis of the device show it possessed 30 hand-cut bronze gears. Intricately connected, the gears enabled predictions of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena, probably down to within a few hours.
"The new model is highly seductive and convincing in all of its details," says François Charette of Germany's Ludwig-Maximilians University in a commentary accompanying the study.
The ship carrying the mechanism sank off the Greek island Anti-kythera in about 60 B.C. Originally housed in a roughly 12-by-7-inch wooden box, the bronze-doored calculator was probably on its way from the island of Rhodes to Rome when it sank, Edmunds says.
With one dial in front and two in back, the hand-cranked device replicated cycles of the sun and moon's appearances in the sky over a repeating 76-year pattern, the study suggests, as well as the planets' motion. The reconstruction supersedes an older, simpler model of the mechanism and shows the ancient Greeks invented differential gears and miniaturized mechanisms in ways unseen until the Renaissance.
Although Rhodes was known for shipping, "the device had no navigational use that I can see," Edmunds says.
Instead, the mechanism encapsulates several hundred years of ancient Greek innovation in astronomy starting about 400
B.C., says classicist Stephen White of the University of Texas-Austin. Around 200 B.C., a trove of Babylonian astronomical measurements revolutionized Greek astronomy, culminating in work by the legendary astronomer Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes around 140 B.C. He devised the device's mechanized eclipse cycles.
The scans have roughly doubled the number of inscriptions spotted on the device, which may be the study's biggest achievement, says classicist Reviel Netz of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "Essentially we now see there are two major inscriptions: one telling us about the machine, the other telling us about the theory underlying it."
Classics scholars will debate and revise the inscriptions, starting at a conference underway in Athens, Edmunds says. "We hope the study makes museums return to their collections to look for more such devices," he says.
Ancient Greek science and technology has received a boost in recent years. The mathematician Archimedes' works are being recovered at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, and a star atlas created by Hipparchos has been discovered on a museum statue, reported by Louisiana State University astronomer Bradley Schaefer last year.
"We now live in a completely new age for the study of antiquity," Netz says. The ancients were inveterate inscribers, he says, but much has been lost.
"New technological breakthroughs make it possible now to recover those writings, and they change completely our picture of antiquity," Netz says. "Generally speaking, (they show) it was much more sophisticated than we have once thought."
For more info...
The Anti-Kythera Mechanism Research Project
Engines Of Our Enginuity: Anti-Kythera Mechanism
E-Math: The Anti-Kythera Mechanism
An Ancient Greek Computer
11/30/2006 USA TODAY
By Dan Vergano
The "Anti-kythera Mechanism," an ancient Greek astronomical calculator dating to about 100 B.C., possessed a technical sophistication centuries ahead of its time, an international research team reports. "The actual design is superb, almost jaw-dropping," says study leader Mike Edmunds of the United Kingdom's Cardiff University. The mechanism is now at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Badly corroded and shattered and an object of fascination for scholars since its recovery in 1902 from a Roman shipwreck, the device "stands as a witness to the extraordinary technological potential of ancient Greece," the study concludes.
Released today at an Athens conference and in the journal Nature, digital imagery and X-ray tomography analysis of the device show it possessed 30 hand-cut bronze gears. Intricately connected, the gears enabled predictions of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena, probably down to within a few hours.
"The new model is highly seductive and convincing in all of its details," says François Charette of Germany's Ludwig-Maximilians University in a commentary accompanying the study.
The ship carrying the mechanism sank off the Greek island Anti-kythera in about 60 B.C. Originally housed in a roughly 12-by-7-inch wooden box, the bronze-doored calculator was probably on its way from the island of Rhodes to Rome when it sank, Edmunds says.
With one dial in front and two in back, the hand-cranked device replicated cycles of the sun and moon's appearances in the sky over a repeating 76-year pattern, the study suggests, as well as the planets' motion. The reconstruction supersedes an older, simpler model of the mechanism and shows the ancient Greeks invented differential gears and miniaturized mechanisms in ways unseen until the Renaissance.
Although Rhodes was known for shipping, "the device had no navigational use that I can see," Edmunds says.
Instead, the mechanism encapsulates several hundred years of ancient Greek innovation in astronomy starting about 400
B.C., says classicist Stephen White of the University of Texas-Austin. Around 200 B.C., a trove of Babylonian astronomical measurements revolutionized Greek astronomy, culminating in work by the legendary astronomer Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes around 140 B.C. He devised the device's mechanized eclipse cycles.
The scans have roughly doubled the number of inscriptions spotted on the device, which may be the study's biggest achievement, says classicist Reviel Netz of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "Essentially we now see there are two major inscriptions: one telling us about the machine, the other telling us about the theory underlying it."
Classics scholars will debate and revise the inscriptions, starting at a conference underway in Athens, Edmunds says. "We hope the study makes museums return to their collections to look for more such devices," he says.
Ancient Greek science and technology has received a boost in recent years. The mathematician Archimedes' works are being recovered at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, and a star atlas created by Hipparchos has been discovered on a museum statue, reported by Louisiana State University astronomer Bradley Schaefer last year.
"We now live in a completely new age for the study of antiquity," Netz says. The ancients were inveterate inscribers, he says, but much has been lost.
"New technological breakthroughs make it possible now to recover those writings, and they change completely our picture of antiquity," Netz says. "Generally speaking, (they show) it was much more sophisticated than we have once thought."
For more info...
The Anti-Kythera Mechanism Research Project
Engines Of Our Enginuity: Anti-Kythera Mechanism
E-Math: The Anti-Kythera Mechanism
An Ancient Greek Computer