The Antikythera Mechanism: Decoding an astonishing 2000 years old astronomical computer

<!--HTML--><p>A lecture that attempts to explain the functional details, the operation and the purpose of use&nbsp;of an ancient astronomical mechanism, built about 2000 ago.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/">The Antikythera Mechanism </a>was found by chance, in a shipwreck, close to the small Greek&nbsp;island of Antikythera, in April 1900, by sponge divers. The shipwreck was dated between 86 and 67&nbsp;BCE (coins from Pergamon). Later the Mechanism was stylistically dated, around the second half of&nbsp;the 2nd century B.C. (200 – 100 BCE).&nbsp;It was a portable (laptop-size), geared&nbsp;mechanism which calculated and displayed, with good&nbsp;precision, the&nbsp;movement of the Sun and the Moon on the sky and the phase of the Moon for a given&nbsp;epoch. It could also calculate the dates of the four-year cycle of the Olympic Games and predict&nbsp;eclipses!&nbsp;Its 30, precisely cut, gears were driven by a manifold, with which the user could select, with&nbsp;the help of a pointer, any particular epoch. While doing so, several pointers were synchronously&nbsp;driven by the gears, to show the above mentioned celestial phenomena on several accurately marked&nbsp;spiral dials. It contained an extensive user’s manual.&nbsp;The exact function of the gears has finally been decoded and a large portion of the manual&nbsp;has been read after 2000 years by a major new investigation, using state of the art equipment.&nbsp;New results concerning the construction of the spirals and the pointers will be presented and&nbsp;the ability of ancient Greeks to use hard metals and cutting tools will be examined.<em> </em></p> <ul> <li><a href="http://antikythera-mechanism.auth.gr/PTM">Polynomial texture mapping (PTM) of the Mechanism</a></li> <li>Lecturer's contact info John H Seiradakis &lt;jhs@astro.auth.gr&gt;</li> </ul> <p>NB! The lecture is recorded but not webcasted, like all Academic Training lectures.</p> <p><strong>Picture credits:</strong></p> <p>- Antikythera1.png: Copyright National Archaeological Museum of Athens<br /> - Antikythera2.png: Credit Professor K. Efstathiou, Aristotle University<br /> - Antikythera3.png: Credit Dr. M. Anastasiou, Aristotle University<br /> - Antikythera4.png: Credit Dr. M. Anastasiou, Aristotle University.</p>