Antikythera Clock was set for the Olympics

An astronomical calculator, considered a technological marvel of antiquity, was also used to track dates of the ancient Olympic games, researchers have found....

"We were astonished because this is not an astronomic cycle but an Olympian cycle, one of social events ... One does not need a piece of high technology to keep track of a simple four-year cycle," he said. "It is perhaps not extravagant to see the mechanism as a microcosm illustrating the temporal harmonization of human and divine order."

LINK

I thought this was worth passing along. It's interesting to me that they are still discovering the various things the worlds first "computer" was capable of, and it doesn;t seem like they are done either . The article also metions that they were able to identify the home town of Archimedes on one of the gears and even though the machine post-dates him by a 100 years, feel they are pointing to a connection.

The impression is that the device came from the western part of greater Greece, perhaps Syracuse. This is based on the names of the months used which tended to vary between cities and locations. It was initially thought that it might have come from Rhodes were ancient writers noted that interesting mechanisms were being made.

A minority also thinks that the names may reflect the builders bias and not the actual location of building.

The link with Archimedes may be stronger than we think as the dating may be slightly off or it may have been built by students-or those influenced by him directly or by his mathematical theories.

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt


I put this up this AM with a few but was short of time to elaborate.

Now, a few more interesting facts:

From Wikipedia --

a) The device is rather small, indicating that the designer was aiming for compactness (it has been compared to a modern laptop computer) and, as a result, the size of the front and back dials is unsuitable for public display. A simple comparison with size of the Tower of the Winds in Athens could give us a hint to suggest that the aim of the Antikythera mechanism manufacturer was the mobility of this device rather than its public display in a fixed place (such as a university, a temple, a museum or public hall).

b) The mechanism had door plates attached to it that contain at least 2000 characters, forming what members of the Antikythera mechanism research project often refer to as an instruction manual for the mechanism. The neat attachment of this manual to the mechanism itself implies ease of transport and personal use.

c) The existence of this "instruction manual" implies that the device was constructed by an expert scientist and mechanic in order to be used by a non-expert traveler (the text gives a lot of information associated with well known geographical locations of the Mediterranean area.

Food for musing upon, no?

Hopefully a newer or older version of one of those devices will show up in one of the villas outside of Pompeii or Herculaneum. One might even show up in one of the Hellenized cities of the ME.

There is also a small chance a scroll talking about them might come to light from the Villa of the Papyri. However as this mainly a philosphical library the chance is small.

[edit on 6/8/08 by Hanslune]