SKIRMISHER

A hundred years ago, divers found an intricate bronze device rotting along with the remains of an ancient Roman shipwreck. So old (it was made years before Jesus was even a glimmer in his mother’s eyes) yet so mechanically complex, what came to be known as the Antikythera mechanism would baffle scientists for the ensuing decades.

The complexity of the gears of the Antikythera mechanism pretty much changes what we’ve known about technology in the Hellenistic Age. Yes, ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about gearing, throw in some fancy thoughts on the nature of the universe. But this?

In fact, says Scientific American in 1959:

Corroded and crumbling from 2,000 years under the sea, its dials, gear wheels and inscribed plates present the historian with a tantalizing problem. Because of them we may have to revise many of our estimates of Greek science. By studying them we may find vital clues to the true origins of that high scientific technology which hitherto has seemed peculiar to our modern civilization, setting it apart from all cultures of the past.

Recently, a team of British and Greek scientists have successfully used 3-D imaging techniques to further understand what the device was all about. But what is so interesting is the nagging thought the device implies: ancient Greeks knew much more about intricate mechanisms that places them hundreds of years ahead of their time. So how much has been lost and what the fuck happened that it took the world some 1,800 years for people like, say, Mueller or Charles Babbage to toy with difference engines?

ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM: WORLD’S OLDEST COMPUTER? [CDNN]

THE CLOCKWORK COMPUTER [The Economist]

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