Researchers Claim to Solve the Mysteries of the Antikythera Mechanism

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Researchers Claim to Solve the Mysteries of the Antikythera Mechanism - ExtremeTech:

When Dimitrios Kondos and his crew of sponge divers found the Antikythera shipwreck in 1900, they weren't trying to make history or upend archaeologists' understanding of high technology in the late 1st century BC. They were mostly killing time.

The crew made some dives off the Greek island of Antikythera while waiting for favorable winds to continue their journey toward North Africa. While diving, they spotted a shipwreck. A recovery mission in 1901 yielded a hefty stash of statues, sculptures, and coins, putting the site on the proverbial map. All of these things happened well before anyone realized the expedition had also returned with incontrovertible evidence of the world's first analog computer: the Antikythera Mechanism.

The Antikythera Mechanism consists of some 82 fragments today, but only roughly a third of the original device is believed to survive. Researchers have known that the device was a calendar for decades, but understanding that an object represents a calendar and understanding how exactly how it was constructed are two different things. This is especially true when said object represents a level of manufacturing sophistication that European civilizations wouldn't achieve again for another 1000 - 1400 years.

Functionally, the Antikythera Mechanism is a type of orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system that shows the procession of various planets and moons over time. The device once contained a complex system of gears that modeled both the five planets known to antiquity as well as the epicycles those planets were believed to follow. [...]

Over the last few decades, a number of projects have attempted to intuit new details about the Antikythera Mechanism and how it functioned. In 2005, researchers used X-ray computed tomography to decode new, previously invisible details about the back of the machine. Dr. Tony Freeth worked on that project nearly 20 years ago, and he led the most recent attempt to intuit exactly how the Antikythera Mechanism was originally constructed.

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