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The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Computer


JamesM

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I don't know if anyone has seen this BBC programme but I would strongly recommend everyone take a look here on iPlayer. Absolutely fascinating how ancient Greece developed technology to anticipate solar eclipses etc - I won't say too much as it might spoilt it but strongly recommend everyone who hasn't seen it to take a look. It's available till the 22nd of May.

James

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:):D:D

Nice to see how most of my posts that I make looking for serious help mostly go unanswered, and the one I make after misreading a thread on a small mobile phone screen gets immediate attention :)

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Nice to see how most of my posts that I make looking for serious help mostly go unanswered, and the one I make after misreading a thread on a small mobile phone screen gets immediate attention :)

:):confused::)

Sorry but not my fault some of your serious posts go unanswered is it ?

Your comment just made me giggle thats all, i do apologise for being HAPPY :)

And i just had to look at some of your post history after that comment so to speak and i quote your words-

icon1.gifAnother boring (to some!) IT person here. I work...

Another boring (to some!) IT person here. I work as Principal Technical Architect. Citrix, Linux, windows, vmware, networking, security, etc. is my geek side. Astronomy helps to forget about "users"...

:)

icon1.gifAnyone help me out there with my question on my...

Anyone help me out there with my question on my previous post. I wonder if i type in invisible ink sometimes you know! I have even emailed 2 of our favorite suppliers and had no reply either. Feeling...

:)

Its people like you sir that get people like me in trouble :D

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Come on you two, don't let a simple misunderstanding cause you to give each other grief.

There's no harm done, so laugh it off and continue the discussion please.

You could become best mates, you never know :):icon_salut:.

Ron.

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Another plus for this programme. But why oh why do the BBC not have better advertising rather than the continual drivel we have to endure. Many thanks to the op for this (and to others who have publicised similar).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just finished the book "Decoding the Heavens" by Jo Marchant. Well worth a read and gives much more detail of the story than is possible in the television programme.

James

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I really enjoyed the program but don't you find it quite "ironic" that "our civilisation" only now have the technology that can can "reveal" to us just how advanced the technology was 2 thousand years ago... I wonder if in another 2 thousand years the "next" civilisation will be wondering how the moon rovers got there!!

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At the end of the book there's a section that discusses how the Antikythera Mechanism changes our view of history and the context in which it came about. The suggestion is that the evidence was there all along, but that no-one had yet "joined the dots". Perhaps it would be more like discovering a moon rover and then suddenly realising what this Saturn V thing was all about.

James

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Really good programme can't believe the ancients pulled it off

Why not? They were just as intelligent as us, and no doubt had their share of geniuses (and dummies!:hello2:). Their brains were as developed as ours, and they would have been far more in touch with the motion of the night sky than 99% of UK light polluted citizens. Their mathematics would have been sufficiently advanced, they had excellent material working skills (look at some of the jewellery they produced, not to mention their architecture).

All they lacked was the body of reference knowledge that we have built up over the last few centuries.

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There's some discussion of this in the book as well. The suggestion is, as I understand it, that the Greeks were actually quite advanced in terms of building geared mechanisms and with the Antikythera were building on hundreds if not thousands of years of observational data from the Babylonians, so they had all the basics there. There are a few possible reasons that perhaps such skills aren't more evident in what their civilisation left behind. It may be because their society didn't really encourage the wide-spread use of engineering. It was often more of a way to demonstrate how clever you were to the social elite than serving any other purpose and that done didn't merit further work. Having served their purpose, it's also entirely possible that many metal objects were recycled to make others. And of course, there was a huge amount of looting by the Romans and others towards the end and many artefacts were lost, smashed or distributed around the Roman Empire to suffer the same fates later on.

James

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I saw the repeat last week and thought that it was fascinating. Especially the bit when the very, very expensive and very, very large piece of kit was taken to the smallish sized artifact rather than the other way around.

How the ancients made all those calculations with no computers and then manufactured the parts so accurately is quite incredible... Knowledge is one thing, but having the tools to help you make this is another...

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This was the second documentary about this device, there were also some ancient maps covered in the first programme, they where incredibly accurate and showed the entire globe. Many of the skills required to produce something like that where passed mainly via ritual on a person to person basis. Conveyors of knowledge and know how where often killed and the documentation destroyed during the same barbaric events that effectively and repeatedly reset progress. I believe this is why we are so surprised when something like this shows up, our points of reference mean we have little insight to the real capabilities of the ancients before circa 2000BC.

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