artemisdart

The Antikythera Mechanism is so cool that I can't even express how excited I am to learn about it.

It's steampunk-y, it's a calendar, AND it's from classical Greece! *hyperventilating*

I could have gone into Mediterranean Studies. I could have been studying this RIGHT NOW.

From The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project:

More than a hundred years ago an extraordinary mechanism was found by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea near the island of Antikythera. It astonished the whole international community of experts on the ancient world. Was it an astrolabe? Was it an orrery or an astronomical clock? Or something else? For decades, scientific investigation failed to yield much light and relied more on imagination than the facts. However research over the last half century has begun to reveal its secrets. It dates from around the 1st century B.C. and is the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world. Nothing as complex is known for the next thousand years. The Antikythera Mechanism is now understood to be dedicated to astronomical phenomena and operates as a complex mechanical "computer" which tracks the cycles of the Solar System."

There's recent news about this ancient device -- news that's being released at an extremely appropriate time, all things considering... Turns out that, as reported in Nature, "The upper subsidiary dial is not a 76-year Callippic dial as previously thought, but follows the four-year cycle of the Olympiad and its associated Panhellenic Games."

So these ancient astronomers (1) built an extremely complex astronomical calculator, (2) tuned it to predict solar eclipses, (3) tuned it to predict the Olympic Games.

This makes me so very happy. Rock on, ancient Greek astronomers.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.com/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7204/full/nature07130.html