The Antikythera Mechanism Revisited Over four years ago in a
post I explored my fascination with the Antikythera Mechanism,
an ancient ‘computer’ of the heavens that seemed to explode the
accepted knowledge of what the ancients were capable of
accomplishing. In 1901, a diver off the Greek isle of
Antikythera brought up this corroded mass of metal and gears
that immediately began to baffle all who investigated it. Back
in 2006, due to a number of events, there was a renewed spate of
interest in the object, especially since its antiquity was
recently confirmed by the latest scientific tests and its
characteristics discussed in the journal Nature. At that time
the dating placed the device as originating sometime around the
end of the 2nd Century BC. There are two sources of amazement
about the Antikythera Mechanism for me: 1) the sheer skill and
craft of its manufacture, and 2) the mathematical and abstract
concepts it was designed to demonstrate. Both dimensions are
beyond what anybody ever conceived as being p