BBC4 - The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Computer

[Roy]

I would recommend searching out this programme on the BBC iPlayer if you've got it. It's a documentary about the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,000-year-old object now regarded as the world's oldest computer, found by divers excavating an ancient Roman shipwreck in 1901. It combines science, archeaology, engineering and you've guessed it astronomy.

Happy watching.

Roy

[Kenny]

Wow. That is fascinating. Incredible discovery.

[Mike]

Absolutely amazing. It just makes you wonder what the world would be like today if this technology was allowed to advance instead of being lost. We would be at least 2000 years ahead of where we are now.

[Mike]

If you missed this first time around, it is on BBC 4 again tonight at 23:00

[MarkS]

It's really worth watching.

[Rick]

Boffins revisit the Antikythera Mechanism and assert it's no longer Greek to them

Academics from University College London and The Cyprus Institute assert that they've built the most accurate model of the Antikythera Mechanism, the one-of-a-kind ancient Greek machine made of meshed gears.

The Mechanism's back story is worthy of myth: it was found in the year 1900, amidst a wreck thought to have gone down 2,000 years earlier. The Mechanism was initially thought to be just a lump of rock or wood. Later investigation yielded evidence of a geared wheel, an artefact of which very few survive from antiquity and mentioned only a few times in ancient literature. As technology improved and finer investigations of the artefact became possible, it was discovered to include meshed gears and to be capable of predicting the movement of planets and the sun.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/15/new_antikythera_mechanism_analysis/

[Rick]

Scientists may have solved ancient mystery of 'first computer'

From the moment it was discovered more than a century ago, scholars have puzzled over the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable and baffling astronomical calculator that survives from the ancient world.

The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle.

Now researchers at UCL believe they have solved the mystery – at least in part – and have set about reconstructing the device, gearwheels and all, to test whether their proposal works. If they can build a replica with modern machinery, they aim to do the same with techniques from antiquity.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/12/scientists-move-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antikythera-mechanism

[RobertM]

Thanks for the update Rick, that was very interesting read ! It's truely amazing what they can do with modern imaging technology.

Robert

[Rick]

We had a talk at OAS about it some years back, bbut clearly the mechanism is now much better understood.