Anti Kythira

[DavidA]

This has always bothered me.  And I would like to have your views on it.

I assume everyone knows about The Anti Kythira device. The mechanical calculator found in the Aegian Sea by pearl divers.  No doubt you have all seen the video about how it was analysed.  If not,  you aught to;  it's brilliant.

BUT. It doesn't make sense.

Nothing exists in a vacuum.  At least from the mechanical perspective.

Yet we are led to believe that this marvelous device is said to be around two tousand years old but there is no 'back-up' technology existing at the time. No one reports finding other geared bronze machines from the same period. Not even simple clocks. It's almost like someone discovering a turbo charged Diesel engine in a pyramid.

All machines have developed through incremental modifications.  Yet this thing emerges full blown;  from nowhere.

You can use Harrison's Marine chronometer as a comparison. Even though clocks were quite common place in the period it too him years to develop his version.

So where are the contempory devices that must have been around at the time ?

Something is wrong with this account.

Dave.
 

[Pete.]

I just watched the documentary about the device and I believe it's origins completely, though I have some reservations on their speculation as to the inventor. Such a device must have taken years of observations, theorising and design and it's entirely possible that that there might only have been one example and none to follow it.

[NeoTech]

Well they used geometric figures for calculations in that time, circles, lines and big ass drawings..  Then someone sat down thought about it for like.. 40 years and figured out a way of drawing geometric figures abstractly over time by using a mechanical device.. But i agree.. the developing process had to be agonizing. But just because we have a incremental "test and develope" approach up an until the mid 80s doesnt mean they really had to have it then.. Look at IT.. there we make quantum leaps in technology every 6-8 yers or so based on theory alone, with no prior testing..

[lordedmond]

its not IT technology its ET technology 


just joking its a clever bit of kit that they have only now replicated, but I seem to remember there was a lot of differential gearing in the device , when they made it to todays standard it was to good and would not turn even with the correct tooth count so the slacked the design and it would then function

this device always prompt my thought lost knowledge this has happened for a long time e.g. how did the guys in Egypt carve out the granite sarcophagus ( the hole in the middle ) it would task us today to do it

a lot of thing from the past are not understood because of the lost knowledge syndrome

Stuart

[DMIOM]

I too have wondered about the lack, so far, of any other similarly complex mechanisms - however the underlying knowledge was being assembled, especially once Pythagoras suggested the Earth was a sphere.  As it may give some idea of early knowledge of the terrestrial sphere's geometry, I've taken (and paraphrased) a few of the headline points from a recent excellent article in "Navigation News" *

• Eratosthones (276-194 BC) realised that, given that the sun shone directly down a well at Syene in Egypt on midusmmer's day, and that it was 1/50th lower at Alexandria, arrived at a conclusion that the earth's polar circumference was (in modern terms) 39,690 km - only 1% different compared to modern polar circumference of 40,008 km
  
  
• Posidonius (c135-51 BC) compared the elevation of the star Canopus (as more of a point source than the Sun) at Alexandria and Rhodes, but only got to 37,800km polar circumference (possibly due to errors in the baseline measurement)
  
  
• More recently, Richard Norwood (c1590-1675) measured the sun's midsummer noon elevation at the Tower of London and in York, a difference of 2 degrees 28 minutes. He then set about measuring the distance between the two observation points, using a 99 foot long surveyor's chain - he got the distance to 367,196 feet (with allowance for the variation in the chain's direction not being exactly N-S, by logging the compass bearing of each chain run). His computed polar circumference was 40,291km compared the current 40,008 km !

Dave

* Navigation News, Royal Institute of Navigation, May/June 2013 edition
"Marine Navigation - a Miscellany of Historical Notes", Ted Gerrard.

[PekkaNF]

One very little understood explanation of the knowledge in the ancient times is that sometimes even a bit esoteric knowledge was considered either dangerous or sacred - pretty dangerous/volatile stuff anyways. Therefore old times you just didn't put anything too revolutionals ideas on your local MadModder and supply few flipant axtra lines to ticle the imagination. No - you would reveal secrets on to very few (quild members?). Secrets very well hiden has tendency to stay very well hidden and someday lost. Sometimes even with some extra effort some information disapears. Look any old thread here with pictures.

PekkaNF

[lordedmond]

One very little understood explanation of the knowledge in the ancient times is that sometimes even a bit esoteric knowledge was considered either dangerous or sacred - pretty dangerous/volatile stuff anyways. Therefore old times you just didn't put anything too revolutionals ideas on your local MadModder and supply few flipant axtra lines to ticle the imagination. No - you would reveal secrets on to very few (quild members?). Secrets very well hiden has tendency to stay very well hidden and someday lost. Sometimes even with some extra effort some information disapears. Look any old thread here with pictures.

PekkaNF

to true 

Stuart

[DavidA]

PekkaNF,

You seem to be thinking more about the fourteenth - fifteenth century.  Remember that this was supposed to be around two thousand years ago. It is the total absence of related machines, even in a crude form,  that worries me. This device was far too sophisticated to just have been a one off. The Greeks could have had the maths,  but not the mechanical tech know-how.  Also, you don't produce something like that then just stop completely for fifteen hundred years.

Dave.

[Brass_Machine]

[PekkaNF]

PekkaNF,

You seem to be thinking more about the fourteenth - fifteenth century.  Remember that this was supposed to be around two thousand years ago. It is the total absence of related machines, even in a crude form,  that worries me. This device was far too sophisticated to just have been a one off. The Greeks could have had the maths,  but not the mechanical tech know-how.  Also, you don't produce something like that then just stop completely for fifteen hundred years.

Dave.

Yes. You are right on that one. I don't have any good idea of thinking that times. I was assuming somewhat analogous view, because to my knowledge human brain hasn't changed much in last 20000 years or so. People have been pretty smart and crafty very long times. I'm pretty sure that concept of time/calendar was very high on list. Followed closely location/navigation. Some cultures were pretty obsessed about it. Take Mayas. I know - different time -but pretty impressive by any standard.

However, only after widespread writing and paper use proliferation of new ideas sustained way was guaranteed. There are plenty of examples of same thing invented several ways and independantly.

This could explain some of it. Not all. I see very valid point too on "too odd" bit that does not "fit" into the puzzle.

Maybe one day there is a satisfactory explanation or maybe it's just a prank. How did they time it anyway?

PekkaNF

[Pete.]

Well since astronomy was already a huge part of science of the day, and they already had non-geared devices such as astrolabes around at the same time, made form the same materials to the same level of craftsmanship. It would only need some person of high import and plenty of money to require an automatic device for predicting the important (in the day) events for it to be commissioned. The fact that it was found in a ship wreck suggests it was commissioned, unless the inventor went down with the ship, because who having built such a device would ever let it out of their possession?

[Noitoen]

You want another example? Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

[shipto]

You want another example? Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

I have seen that before wasnt it used for gold plating or something similar?
edit: just read furthur down the page that the electroplating theory is not thought right now but I cant see why else they would want electricity. Maybe they liked the way it would tingle on their tonques 

[DavidA]

I watched an item on the tv about this so called baghdad battery,  and if nothing else it reminded me how you have to be careful of presenters.
The guy who was presenting the article had before him a selection of bits to replicate the battery (actually,  cell) and what he produced was a simple unit with the two electrodes,  the little earthenware jar and some wine vinegar as an electrolyte.  So far,  so good.

Sticking the two electrodes in a lemon would hace produced the same result.  But I digress.

He then connected a digi VOM across the electrodes and,  pointing the camera at the meter declared ' see,  over two volt from this simple battery (sic)'.  And indeed,  the meter shower 247. 

This immediately rang alarm bells and my Bull S*** detector started ringing.

Closer examination shower it was switched to the milliVolt range. So he was getting 0.247 Volt. Not 2.47 Volt as he was claiming.

This seemed more reasonable.

It is agree that the device,  if it ever was used,  would have been capable of some form of electroplating. But it would have been very slow.
There is also the problem of why would anyone  back in those days even have thought of the process.  There is no history of things like that.

Pekka,

.. No - you would reveal secrets on to very few (quild members?). Secrets very well hiden has tendency to stay very well hidden and someday lost...

Sorry mate,  that explanation doesn't fly.  If you have craftsmen capable of producing the mechanism,  who can produce 354 tooth gears and fit lots of very finely produced bits together to make such a thing,  then that knowledge doesn't appear over night nor does it just dissapear as quickly. Once the idea is out there,  it stays out there.

Ever thought, 'how did they drill all the small holes in the bronze ?  or make the little pins and bushes ?   

If you remember,  the man who made the replica (Micheal Wright ?) demonstrated the making of a gear.  He marked-off  the blank,  Then said something like  'then the worker would have taken a file ....'  Whoa there !!  A file ? Where would a year zero Hellenic MadModder get a file from ? .

No,  the whole thing is too advanced.

Dave.

[Alan Haisley]

Anyone can see from pictures of the device that it is a control mechanism lost from a time machine. Who do you suppose the poor bloke was who got stranded back there? 

Alan

[PekkaNF]

That baghdad battery thing stinks. Probably it's completely something different than it's touted to be.

Dave,
You are familiar with "Automaton"? With few different spellings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton

OT: You know the silver swan?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Swan_%28automaton%29

That is  17-18th century frivial toy.

What is pretty impressive is Mayan calendar and their astronomy. That has pretty strong circular idea behind. Therefore I think than in conceptual level current consensus about antikythera mechanism speculated meaning/use has it's credit. Not only in new world, but the consept of the speculated use and knowledge must have been around 100 BC enroute from Egypt to Rome.

Wiki says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
The construction has been dated to the early 1st century BCE. Technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century CE, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe.[7]

http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/
The ship, a Roman merchant ship of some 300 tons, had sunk on a well-used trade route from the Eastern to the Western Mediterranean. The wreck and its contents are consistent with a date of 80–50 BC. The famous Jacques Cousteau recovered Pergamese coins from about 86–67 BC, which with Ephesian coins of 70–60 BC reinforces a view that this had been a treasure ship on its way to Rome including booty from Pergamon (circa 84 BC) after the First Mithradatic War. A reasonable date for the wreck is thus 85–60 BC. The ship itself is thought to built, at least in part, from much older timber, 200±43 BC.

Dating of the mechanism, I'm not that sure. If I have it right, dating is based on muck this mechanism was encased in. Therefore to my knowledge the mechanism itself is not dated very conclusively.

Most likely simple explanation is the most correct one. I could easily accept that the current estimation is wrong. But how much?

If you had to date it, which century you would feel comfortable with? Based on concept of the assumed use of the object? Materials? Manufacturing methods? Shape of the gear wheel tooth? Bearings? Pinions?

Pekka

[Pete.]

If you had to date it, which century you would feel comfortable with? Based on concept of the assumed use of the object? Materials? Manufacturing methods? Shape of the gear wheel tooth? Bearings? Pinions?

Pekka

I would trust the inscribed markings before anything else. The hand-shaped gears aren't much use if there is nothing to compare it with but the language would be common for all aspects of the age. I recall from the program that a couple of the inscriptions were particular to one region and time.