A friend sends this article from the New York Times that once again shows how simplistic are our “modern” ideas of the mental world and abilities of our predecessors. “After all, they weren’t the ones to invent the hydrogen bomb, and machine guns, and the ICBM, so how civilized could they have been?” The answer is — plenty, and we’re only little by little rediscovering how much so.
AN ANCIENT COMPUTER SURPRISES SCIENTISTS
By John Noble Wilford
New York Times
November 29, 2006
A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena
ordering takeout on her cellphone.
But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials
were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians
of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and
illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and
planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world¹s first computer, has
now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and
three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American
researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear
functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical
sophistication for the period.”
The researchers, led by Tony Freeth and Mike G. Edmunds, both of the
University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting the results of their study in
Thursday¹s issue of the journal Nature.
They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar
motions and the gears were a mechanical representation of the irregularities
of the Moon’s orbital course across the sky, as theorized by the astronomer
Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.
The Roman ship carrying the artifacts sank off the island of Antikythera
around 65 B.C. Some evidence suggests that the ship had sailed from Rhodes.
The researchers speculated that Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes, might have
had a hand in designing the device.
In another article in the journal, a scholar not involved in the research,
François Charette of the University of Munich museum, in Germany, said the
new interpretation of the Antikythera Mechanism “is highly seductive and
convincing in all of its details.” It is not the last word, he concluded,
“but it does provide a new standard, and a wealth of fresh data, for future
research.”
Historians of technology think the instrument is technically more complex
than any known device for at least a millennium afterward.
The mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for seasons of
planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30,
possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers reported. An
ingenious pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations
in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of
the Moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth.
The functions of the mechanism were determined by the numbers of teeth in
the gears. The 53-tooth count of certain gears, the researchers said, was
“powerful confirmation of our proposed model of Hipparchos’ lunar theory.”
The detailed imaging revealed more than twice as many inscriptions as had
been recognized from earlier examinations. Some of these appeared to relate
to planetary as well as lunar motions. Perhaps, the researchers said, the
mechanism also had gearings to predict the positions of known planets.
Dr. Charette noted that more than 1,000 years elapsed before instruments of
such complexity are known to have re-emerged. A few artifacts and some
Arabic texts suggest that simpler geared calendrical devices had existed,
particularly in Baghdad around A.D. 900.
It seems clear, Dr. Charette said, that “much of the mind-boggling
technological sophistication available in some parts of the Hellenistic and
Greco-Roman world was simply not transmitted further,” adding, “The
gear-wheel, in this case, had to be reinvented.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/science/30computecnd.html