ANCIENT MECHANICAL DEVICE
- calculated the heavens
The Antikythera Mechanism, which dates to about 100 B.C., is
believed to have been created by the Greeks to track the
lunar and solar cycles.
For more than 100 years, researchers have been trying to
unlock the secrets of a mysterious gadget discovered at the
bottom of the sea near the Greek island of Antikythera.
With the help of Hewlett-Packard scientists — and HP’s
vaunted imaging technology — more information has come to
light about the so-called Antikythera Mechanism.
The bronze device, which dates to about 100 B.C., is
considered the oldest mechanical calculator in history. It
was used to track the movements of the moon and the sun.
"It is the first mechanical calculator known to mankind,"
said Tom Malzbender, a research scientist at HP Labs in Palo
Alto, Calif. "Nothing as complex is known until you get to
the Middle Ages, when people started building clocks."
The device is thought to have been on a Roman ship when the
vessel sank off Antikythera. Sponge divers discovered the
wreck in 1900.
Malzbender’s colleague, Dan Gelb, compared the bronze device
to a laptop computer. It stood about a foot tall, 8 inches
wide and 3 to 4 inches deep. The mechanism had about 30
hand-cut gear-wheels and was thought to have been used to
create agricultural and religious calendars.
"They think the device had a hand crank on the side to dial
in data, and it would show you where in the sky the moon or
sun will be," Gelb said.
Scientists, who have been studying the fragments that make
up the device in Greece, found that the device was capable
of even more sophisticated astronomical analyses. The device
apparently was used to predict lunar and solar eclipses.
The new knowledge was uncovered with the help of powerful
X-ray technology and a sophisticated imaging system invented
by HP called Reflectance Imaging. The technique involves
taking photos and re-creating images of an object under
different lighting conditions. The number of characters that
researchers could discern on the device more than doubled,
from 800 to 2,000.
