Scientists at University College London's Antikythera Research Team have presented "a radical new model [for the ancient Greek astronomical calculator, the Antikythera Mechanism] that matches all of the data and culminates in an elegant display of the ancient Greek Cosmos," according to a study published on Friday in Nature.  — Read the rest

Over the past four years, I've been a devoted viewer of Clickspring, the YouTube channel of an Australian clockmaker named Chris. The main project Chris has been working on over that time is reconstructing a working Antikythera Mechanism using as much of the tools and techniques as was likely used in its original construction. — Read the rest

Swiss luxury watch company Hublot has announced a version of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, that is incorporated into a wristwatch. The mechanism is to be displayed at the 2012 Baselworld expo before moving to a permanent exhibit at Musée des arts et métiers in Paris. — Read the rest

This short, smart video uses a Lego replica of the Antikythera Mechanism to demonstrate just how the ancient Greek celestial calendar worked.

Behind the Scenes: Lego Antikythera Mechanism

BoingBoing reader Rafael says,

This is a link to an article written for the American Mathematical Society's website back in April 2000 on the function of the Antikythera Mechanism (the world's oldest example of a mechanism with gears dating from 87 B.C.).

The Antikythera shipwreck — source of the famous ancient clockwork Antikythera Mechanism — has remained shockingly unexplored in the 100 years or so that we've known about it. In fact, other than a visit by Jacques Cousteau in 1970s, there hadn't been any official, scientific excavations until last year. — Read the rest

At the bottom of the the sea

In the tradition of The Shining re-cut to look like an uplifting comedy, comes this music video, which repurposes scenes from several movies—most prominently 2001: A Space Odyssey—to tell the story of a misunderstood computer that accidentally hurts the ones it loves. — Read the rest

The Antikythera Mechanism is a two-thousand year-old clock made in Greece that was discovered a century ago in a shipwreck. Two years ago, scientists studying the bits and pieces that survived under the sea were able to figure out that the device was used to calculate astronomical cycles. — Read the rest

Some of the mystery surrounding the Antikythera Mechanism, a mechanical computer recovered from a 2100-year-old Roman shipwreck near Britain Greece has been unravelled. The device was an astronomical calculator — and it employed a differential gear!

Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine.

Scientists have uncovered the workings of an ancient computer called the Antikythera Mechanism. Built at the end of the second century B.C.E, the device was used to calculate and display moon phases and a luni-solar calendar. Its exact workings have been something of a mystery since it was first found in 1901 at the site of a Roman shipwreck. — Read the rest

The Antikythera mechanism, recovered off a sunken ship in Greece in 1900, is thought to be a clockwork device to calculate the orbits of the celestial bodies. New analysis of the remaining fragments shows that it was wicked-cool:

The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth.

I'm a big fan of tantalizingly complex pre-electric automatons and computers, from the mechanism found at Antikythera to the Blaise Bontems. In an hourlong documentary, embedded below, Professor Simon Schaffer reviews the history of clockwork devices crafted to mimic the behaviour of living things. — Read the rest

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