Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.

[supernova]

Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: July 31, 2008

After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.



Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient astronomical computer built by the Greeks around 80 B.C. It was found on a shipwreck by sponge divers in 1900, and its exact function still eludes scholars.

The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, on Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with Archimedes.

Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course.

More... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/science/31computer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[predfan]

1. Sadly, a scheduled rise in the Greek minimum raise forced wholesale layoffs,

and the rest is history.

[supernova]

2. Huh?

:P