Antikythera Device

[BaalChatzaf]

Today is the 115 th anniversary of the discovery of the Antikythera Device  found in 148  feet of water in the Aegean Sea.  It was aboard a sunken cargo ship.  The device is a hand cranked computer-calendar machine which keeps the month, the day of the month, the phase of the moon,  the position of the planets (at the time the machine was made there were only five known planets,  all of them visible (at least part of the time) to the unaided human eye.  It was a complex hand powered device  consisting of many interlocking  gears and cams.  It was made sometime during the life of Archimedes (about 2250 years ago) and  exhibits a degree of sophistication of design and craftsmanship  not  seen in Europe  until  the the time of Blaise Pascal who invented and built a hand cranked gear driven machine around 1642.  A Pascal's machine could only do one thing,  add  numbers of seven or eight digits.   Computers  exhibiting multi-functionality were not seen in Europe until the 19 th century around the time of Charles Babbage.

Have a look  here:  https://www.youtube.com/embed/LR2qZ0A8vic?rel=0

Here is a chart showing the gearing relationships  of the machine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#/media/File:Gearing_Relationships_of_the_Antikythera_Mechanism.svg

The machine itself is remarkable, because until  people figured it out, it was not known just how sophisticated machine design was in the  city of Alexandria (in its day, the brain capitol  and information storage capitol of the world).  Even more remarkable is how the  machine itself was reverse engineered from a very corroded state using the most modern viewing technology  (MRI  images were constructed to see all the gears and their entrainment in the corroded metallic mass).  So the most modern technology was used to figure out ancient technology  which, it turns out,  was not all that far  behind modern technology.

There is a lesson to be learned.   Sometimes  we moderns  smugly think of how much smarter we are than the ancients (quaint old primitives  they).  Not so.  The smartest people who lived  15,000, 10,000, 5000, 2500  years ago were as smart and creative as our current  best.  In the past there were Einsteins.  But they had names like Euclid and Archimedes.  At about the same time the Antikythera Machine was designed and made,  Heron of Alexandria  was wowing the crowd  with his state-of-the-art  steam driven  turbine machine.  Heron was as smart as Leo Da Vinci who himself  was on a par with the most advanced engineers of today.  The main difference between us and the ancients is that we know more  not that we all smarter than the smartest of them.  Rather it is  that we are the recipients and beneficiaries  of all the knowledge accumulated between Then and Now.  Most of that knowledge for us is a free gift.  At any given time only New Stuff are the incremental advances of the present and the occasional Breakthrough.  Further more  if a technician who participated in the construction of the Collaseum, the technician who operated the human and animal powered cranes of the time  were brought forward to our time to see a skyscraper being  constructed,  he would have caught on immediately as to what the machines were doing and why, even if he could not possibly understand what powered and controlled them. 

Modern Science,  that which separates us the most from the Ancients  is only 500 years old and electrical power and electronics which is what makes modern times modern is less than 250 years old.  The first chemical storage battery that we know about was made by Allesandro Volta (he of the volt)  in 1800, less than 220 years ago.

[Brant Gaede]

The first link goes to the wrong place, Bob.

Fascinating.

--Brant

[jts]

The neanderthal who invented the wheel was a genius.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, jts said:

The neanderthal who invented the wheel was a genius.

 

That he/she  was.   If  you take the Ayn Randian view expressed in Galt's Speech  that genius was seized by his cave mates  and beaten to death for having dared to invent something  new.  But the moochers kept on using his/her wheel. 

[Brant Gaede]

10 hours ago, jts said:

The neanderthal who invented the wheel was a genius.

 

It wasn't the wheel so much as the wheel attached to an axle attached to a cart attached to an animal.

The Inca "civilization" had no wheel (technology).

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

6 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

It wasn't the wheel so much as the wheel attached to an axle attached to a cart attached to an animal.

The Inca "civilization" had no wheel (technology).

--Brant

Don't underestimate the wheelbarrow.  It was invented in China about 2000 years ago and it revolutionized seed planting. 

See "The Genius of China"  by Robert Temple. 

Also the south pointing wagon.  Once its  direction was set  it could keep track of all no skidding turns and constantly point south.  Also invented in China.

At one time China was the most intellectually productive nation on Earth.  She may yet make a come back. 

[syrakusos]

Baal's link took me to an anti-aging conference. Here are some of my resources on the Antikythera Device.  

The device may have been a collaboration among Archimedes, Eratosthenes, and Apollonius. Archimedes is known to have constructed "spheres" that showed the movements of the planets. Eratosthenes was the Librarian at Alexandria. Apollonius was the best geometer of the time. Even if Archimedes built it entirely on his own, the device shows successive stages of work. It also displays remarkable sophistication that did not come in an instant of insight, but long repetitions of better effort.  Just cutting the gears was an achievement.  Although the device was singular, many similar mechanisms must have existed, yet all are lost.

Dr. Anthony Freeth heads the team that has decoded much more of the Antikythera device.  Papers are here:

ISAW Papers 4 (February, 2012) The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism by Tony Freeth and Alexander Jones
http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/4/

Eclipse Prediction on the Ancient Greek AstronomicalCalculating Machine Known as the Antikythera Mechanism by Tony Freeth
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103275

Building the Cosmos in the Antikythera Device by Tony Freeth 

https://pos.sissa.it/archive/conferences/170/018/Antikythera & SKA_018.pdf

You can view a 2-hour lecture at Stanford here.  (I did it in three sittings, but it was worthwhile.)

 

[BaalChatzaf]

5 hours ago, syrakusos said:

Baal's link took me to an anti-aging conference. Here are some of my resources on the Antikythera Device.  

The device may have been a collaboration among Archimedes, Eratosthenes, and Apollonius. Archimedes is known to have constructed "spheres" that showed the movements of the planets. Eratosthenes was the Librarian at Alexandria. Apollonius was the best geometer of the time. Even if Archimedes built it entirely on his own, the device shows successive stages of work. It also displays remarkable sophistication that did not come in an instant of insight, but long repetitions of better effort.  Just cutting the gears was an achievement.  Although the device was singular, many similar mechanisms must have existed, yet all are lost.

Dr. Anthony Freeth heads the team that has decoded much more of the Antikythera device.  Papers are here:ISAW Papers 4 (February, 2012) The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism by Tony Freeth and Alexander Jones
http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-pape
rs/4/Eclipse Prediction on the Ancient Greek AstronomicalCalculating Machine Known as the Antikythera Mechanism by Tony Freeth
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103275

Building the Cosmos in the Antikythera Device by Tony Freeth 

https://pos.sissa.it/archive/conferences/170/018/Antikythera & SKA_018.pdf

You can view a 2-hour lecture at Stanford here.  (I did it in three sittings, but it was worthwhile.)

 

They devices were made of copper based metals.  They oxidize  a fair amount and might not be recognizable after 2000+ years. As it was it took an MRI machine to figure out what the Device was and how it worked. 

[Brant Gaede]

This is impressive. I'm more impressed, however, by the guy who, back then, calculated the diameter of the Earth.

--Brant

Columbus had nothing on him--nothing!

[BaalChatzaf]

10 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

This is impressive. I'm more impressed, however, by the guy who, back then, calculated the diameter of the Earth.

--Brant

Columbus had nothing on him--nothing!

Eratosthenes of  Alexandria, the director of the Library of Alexandria which was more than thus a place for scrolls and books.  The Library was a research center and a clearing house for the best thinking of its age.  Geniuses like Archimedes worked there.  Archimedes worked in Alexandria for a time before returning to his home, Syracusa (in Sicily).  Eratosthenes figured out the circumference of the earth by measuring the angle to the sun on noon of summer's day (June 21) in Alexandria  and on summer's day in Syrene a town south of Alexandria  located almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees north latitude). Eratosthene commissioned a surveying team to accurately measure the distance from the center of Alexandria to the town well at Syrene.  On summer's day sun shined directly down the well. 90 degrees up/down and no shadow.   Eratosthenes determined the the angle difference of the sun was 7.5 degrees and the distance from Alexandria to the Syene well was 5000 stadia. See http://www.mpoweruk.com/figs/Eratosthenes.htm for the details. He did his calculation of the circumference of the Earth by assuming Earth is spherical and the sun's rays came in parallel because of the great distance the sun was from the earth.   This was essentially a low-tech experiment and produced a figure that differs from the modern measurement of circumference by   one percent (!!!!!!).  I leave it to you to reconstruct Eratosthenes thinking (hint - basic Euclidean geometry).  BTW  Euclid himself  did his work at Alexandria.  

Eratosthenes was called "beta" by his colleagues because he was number two at just about everything.  Number two in mathematics, music, philosophy, history, science and literature.  He was number one at management of the Library. Alexandria at her height and prime   was Brain/Mind City,  Planet Earth. She was the home of mathematics, science,  philosophy, literature, music and   medicine.  She was founded by Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals and his dynasty lasted 13 generations.  Cleopatra was one of the latter of the Ptolemy dynasty.   The fall of Alexandria was signalled by the murder of Hypatia by Christian fanatics.  Its doom and decline clearly marked by the destruction of what was left of the Library after the Romans and later the Christians had their way with it. The final chapter of the Library  The Library was finished off by Caliph Umar  a Muslim who "reasoned" thus:  If the books of the Library contained material that contradicted the Holy Q'ran then  they should be destroyed.  If the books in the Library agreed with the Holy Q'ran they were redundant and there was no reason for keeping them. So what was left in the LIbrary was burned to keep the water of the bath houses in Alexandria warm.  Go figure.....   Caesar caused the first burning accidentally when his troops put down an uprising of Egyptian patriots (Caesar was not a vandal,  but military actions do have unfortunate consequences). Later burnings were done by Christian fanatics because the knowledge in the library was Pagan and of the Devil.  Caliph Umar finished the job for entirely similar reasons. 

 

Footnote:  Using the Egyptian measure of 157.5 meters/stade, Eratosthenes error in estimating the circumference is only 1.6% from the true value of 40,008 kms. Using the Attic (Greek) measure of 185 metres/stade the error amounts to 16%. The polar circumference of the Earth is nearly circular, but Styrene is not due south of Alexandria so a slight error would occur unless the difference in longitude  were compensates. 

"Beta"  Eratosthenes  was one smart dude!

[Brant Gaede]

It seems 5000 stadia is about 900 miles. (308 meters X 5000 = 1,540,000  meters divided by 1700 meters.)

Was Syrene that far south of Alexandria?!

7.5 degrees into 360 = 48 into 9000 = 187.5 miles. I think 5000 stadia is incorrect.

--Brant

edit: it seems my idea of how many meters made a stadia was wrong

Edited June 1, 2017 by Brant Gaede

[syrakusos]

For a concise biography of Eratosthenes and his works see, Circumference by Nicholas Nicastro (St. Martins 2008) which I reviewed here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/12/circumference.html

As for the Antikythera Device, as I understand, while we have the back of the machine fairly well figured out, the front face is still largely conjectural.

One question not answered was how the machine was intended to be powered. It calculates the position of the Moon over time with precision not seen for another 2000 years. But in order for that to work, you need a starting reference. The machine was in transit when it was lost. To be used again, it needed to be set up and calibrated. It it not likely that the gearing was meant for hand-cranking back and forth. That would be like an idiot playing with a clock or wristwatch to see the numbers change.  Rather, the machine would be in one place and would be running constantly, a quantitative orrery.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

8 hours ago, syrakusos said:

For a concise biography of Eratosthenes and his works see, Circumference by Nicholas Nicastro (St. Martins 2008) which I reviewed here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/12/circumference.html

As for the Antikythera Device, as I understand, while we have the back of the machine fairly well figured out, the front face is still largely conjectural.

One question not answered was how the machine was intended to be powered. It calculates the position of the Moon over time with precision not seen for another 2000 years. But in order for that to work, you need a starting reference. The machine was in transit when it was lost. To be used again, it needed to be set up and calibrated. It it not likely that the Asgearing was meant for hand-cranking back and forth. That would be like an idiot playing with a clock or wristwatch to see the numbers change.  Rather, the machine would be in one place and would be running constantly, a quantitative orrery.

 

As you say,  the raw power to the device was a hand crank (what else could it have been, back in those days?).   Your precise question is how is the device calibrated to the correct state of the visible heavens.  Once that "ipl"  was established the device was a handy-dandy  calendar and guide to the skies.  To use your clock analogy,  one must take his very own clock and set it to the "official time" of the realm  which in our case is WWV  or the Greenwich Observatory in England. Getting the right time  for your clock is easy these days.  Just  go to site   time.is on your internet connected computer.

https://time.is/