The Antikythera Mechanism

Its fascinating. Read seen about it a long time ago very welcome to have myself reminded about it.

The one thing i don't strictly understand is what is the use of such a device than can predict/calculate so far into the future. (That isn't strictly accurate though as i guess its just a machine that can calculate the same "shorter"cycle over and over.)

If mathematicians and engineers had the ability to produce things to that degree of accuracy, then surely less complex everyday, common calculating machines would be abundant ?

Then again why would you need an upgrade over an abacus ? Why do you need a machine to dig a hole or carry a heavy load when you can just assign 100 slaves to do that?

Anyway very fascinating i suspect its origins date back very further into history..
 

I know it's late but I've just fallen through a rabbit hole watching these. Amazing stuff.
 
always been intrigued by that relic, makes me wonder how prevalent that tech actually was, given we've only found that one example as far as i'm aware, and what other tech they had that we haven't found and prehaps never will. as far as i'm aware the AM isn't even mentioned in any literature from that time.
 
wolfie138 said:
always been intrigued by that relic, makes me wonder how prevalent that tech actually was, given we've only found that one example as far as i'm aware, and what other tech they had that we haven't found and prehaps never will. as far as i'm aware the AM isn't even mentioned in any literature from that time.
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i'd guess things like that would maybe be similar in prevalence to say the LHC would be today, of course taking into account the requirement for countries sufficiently well off to afford to have people who's job is to sit around thinking.
 
wolfie138 said:
always been intrigued by that relic, makes me wonder how prevalent that tech actually was, given we've only found that one example as far as i'm aware, and what other tech they had that we haven't found and prehaps never will. as far as i'm aware the AM isn't even mentioned in any literature from that time.
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What's amazing when you watch the videos is how many modern tools the guy uses - mainly a milling machine and a metal lathe. So these guys would have done all that stuff by hand. And that's not even taking into account the fact that they would had have to work out the motions of all planetary bodies.
 
adolf hamster said:
i'd guess things like that would maybe be similar in prevalence to say the LHC would be today, of course taking into account the requirement for countries sufficiently well off to afford to have people who's job is to sit around thinking.
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And far less well known in its own time due to the far lower level of technology relevant to communication. Add the loss of most of the records between then and now and there's a lot of scope for things being lost. It's likely that the Antikythera mechanism was a one of a kind device invented by one person. Maybe they died when the boat sank.
 
adolf hamster said:
i'd guess things like that would maybe be similar in prevalence to say the LHC would be today, of course taking into account the requirement for countries sufficiently well off to afford to have people who's job is to sit around thinking.
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true, but one of the suggestions i came across was that it was a kinda uber sextant, for ship navigation etc, which might tie in w/ the fact it was found in the sea. that seemed to suggest that it would be a perhaps not-uncommon item. of course, that theory could be total ******** and a ship could have just been transporting it rather than having it as actually equipment. or it was a prototype and the ship got into trouble and that was the end of that.
stuff like this fascinates me though, how ancient cultures could cut and more humungous blocks of stone around etc, and weirdie things like the little model aeroplanes/space shuttles they found.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
What's amazing when you watch the videos is how many modern tools the guy uses - mainly a milling machine and a metal lathe. So these guys would have done all that stuff by hand. And that's not even taking into account the fact that they would had have to work out the motions of all planetary bodies.
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No, they wouldn't. They would have had to have access to the already existing records and papers. Ancient Greek knowledge of astronomy visible by the naked eye was very advanced by the time the AM was made.

Making detailed work by hand isn't particularly startling. It only seems so to people today because we're so used to modern powered tools. It takes far longer to do precision work by hand and it requires a high degree of skill specifically in doing that work with manual tools, but that's what skilled artisans had before modern powered tools existed.

The standout thing for me is that it's a complex interaction of complex gears, calculated and made for a specific purpose. There's nothing else like that until well over 1000 years later.
 
It's advanced technology for its time for sure and certainly one of a kind. There are many instances of artefacts and devices used in ancient times that we couldn't explain for ages until modern technology advanced enough to be able to read the landscape in which they were found and chemical analysis of the objects themselves. King Tut was buried with an iron dagger for example, and hieroglyphs told of gifts from the skies leading some portions of the modern day fanbase to speculate ancient aliens when in fact more recent studies of the area and composition of the dagger reveal it was in fact chemically matched to meteorite fragments that crashed not too far away at the time.

Likewise the scarab beetle on Tut's breastplate was made of glass, something they would not have had back then either and research of the area had shown that a meteorite shower in the deserts nearby resulted in glass-like results from the impact force as the rocks hit the sand.

As mentioned, civilisations were highly skilled, they had to create items for their kings and queens with surgical precision and all by hand. Some items will have taken an entire lifetime to craft no doubt.
 
Angilion said:
No, they wouldn't. They would have had to have access to the already existing records and papers. Ancient Greek knowledge of astronomy visible by the naked eye was very advanced by the time the AM was made.

Making detailed work by hand isn't particularly startling. It only seems so to people today because we're so used to modern powered tools. It takes far longer to do precision work by hand and it requires a high degree of skill specifically in doing that work with manual tools, but that's what skilled artisans had before modern powered tools existed.

The standout thing for me is that it's a complex interaction of complex gears, calculated and made for a specific purpose. There's nothing else like that until well over 1000 years later.
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I actually wrote and then deleted a bit about their records. We have been observing the heavens for millennia. I've no doubt they had records of it.

When it comes to the work, I'm sure they would have been capable of doing it by hand, but the time invest must have been astronomical (if you'll excuse the pun).
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I actually wrote and then deleted a bit about their records. We have been observing the heavens for millennia. I've no doubt they had records of it.
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More impressively, they had an understanding of it. A remarkable degree of understanding considering they were doing the whole lot without any tools at all. Bare eyes and bare brains and a lot of painstaking work over time. Also recording and sharing of academic work on an unprecedented scale, which in some ways might well have been the most important advance. You can't build on previous work if you don't know about it and at least almost all advances in knowledge and technology build on previous work to at least some degree. Standing on the shoulders of giants.

Random example: ~200BC Eratosthenes calculated the size of the Earth(*). More importantly, he deduced a method of doing so. He didn't have to discover the shape of the Earth and he didn't have to discover the mathematical knowledge and techniques his method required because both those things had already been done by other people and recorded and distributed widely enough for Eratosthenes to have access to them.

When it comes to the work, I'm sure they would have been capable of doing it by hand, but the time invest must have been astronomical (if you'll excuse the pun).
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Yes, and not just in the making of it. It probably took 10 years of training for the maker to become skilled enough at the work to even start making it.




* As an aside, we don't know for sure how accurate his results were because the unit of length he expressed them in was a stadium and there were several values for that unit. But the important thing is his method, which would be exactly right if the Earth was a perfect sphere (which it almost is). Any error in his results would be due to limitations of accuracy in his measurements.
 
potatolord said:
Lots of slaves and big whips.
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Where? When?

Serious questions, by the way. It might have been done that way sometimes somewhere, but I don't know of any examples so I'd be glad to learn about them. Maybe some building work in the Roman empire. They tended to use concrete, but they also used very large cut stones in some buildings and they did have an awful lot of slaves at the peak of the empire's power.

Generally speaking, stuff built with "humungous blocks of stone" in ancient cultures was stuff of immense importance to those cultures. Stonehenge, the pyramids, great temples to the culture's gods, that sort of thing. Very high status stuff. Stuff that free people would willingly, even eagerly, work on. Also, the numbers usually don't add up for then being built by slave labour - there usually weren't enough slaves.
 
Angilion said:
Where? When?

Serious questions, by the way. It might have been done that way sometimes somewhere, but I don't know of any examples so I'd be glad to learn about them. Maybe some building work in the Roman empire. They tended to use concrete, but they also used very large cut stones in some buildings and they did have an awful lot of slaves at the peak of the empire's power.

Generally speaking, stuff built with "humungous blocks of stone" in ancient cultures was stuff of immense importance to those cultures. Stonehenge, the pyramids, great temples to the culture's gods, that sort of thing. Very high status stuff. Stuff that free people would willingly, even eagerly, work on. Also, the numbers usually don't add up for then being built by slave labour - there usually weren't enough slaves.
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Egyptians, Austrians, aztecs, mughals etc
 
That is what I have read and seen in docus too in more recent years, no slavery but the entire culture coming together and chipping in their part to build the pyramids over an entire lifetime or even beyond. That's the only way they could have done it to that kind of scale and complexity. The engineering involved to stop slabs of stone weighing severeal tons each at the lightest weight collapsing on the inside from the weight of sections above is mind boggling.
 
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