Strangest Mysteries of the World and Beyond !

Antikythera Mechanism- Oldest Computer of the world

A very mysterious object that turned history upside down is the so-called Antikythera Mechanism.

In 1900 a sponge diver was working in the Mediterranean, just off the island of Antikythera at a depth of about 138 feet. Divers had noticed various fragments of ancient cargo scattered along the bottom of this location but it was one Elias Stadaitos who discovered the source of these artifacts.

Elias found the remains of a Roman cargo ship and for many months he returned to the site to find statues, pottery and interesting clumps of rock which often encrusted metallic objects.

In May of 1902 an archaeologist named Valerios Stais noticed that one piece of interesting rock seemed to have what looked like a gear wheel embedded in it and set the piece aside for further inspection.

The original piece of rock was about 13 inches high, 7 inches wide and only 3 inches thick, leading many to speculate that it was probably just a piece of a much larger mechanism. There were also symbols etched in the metal which later were shown to be Greek.

Although difficult to date, the strange artifact was thought to be over two thousand years old, making it one of the earliest precision geared devices in existence. The fine teeth of the gears suggested it was some type of clock mechanism, but the complexity of the pieces also suggested that it was designed to do more than tell the time of day.

The artifact, which became known as "the Antikythera Mechanism" was largely unknown for many decades as it was meticulously cleaned. In 1951 when the encrusted rock had finally been cleared to reveal the badly eroded gears, a British scientist named Derek Price began a comprehensive study of the devices function and probably use.

What makes it so mysterious is that the mechanical technology, and the purpose of the object, is typical of 18th century technology – not BC technology!

All the metal parts of the machine seem to have been cut from a single sheet of low-tin bronze about two millimetres thick; no parts were cast or made of a different metal. From the ancient Greek inscriptions on the plate of the clock, we can assume that it dates from the first century BC.

It was designed for use in astronomy and served to calculate sunrise, sunset and moon movements. This all means that more than 2000 years ago, the Greeks – or someone who expressed himself in the old-Greek language – were already using technology which we only invented 300 years ago.

The Antikythera Mechanism gained world attention when it was the cover story in Scientific American (June 1959) and was later exposed to the general public by Arthur Clarke's book Mysterious World.

In Clarke's book he described the mechanism as "The world's first computer" and suggested that it was capable of calculating the position of the stars and planets.

This was largely disputed by historians who reminded the world that "planets" were only a vague concept of scholars around the time of Copernicus in the sixteenth century!

Although the mechanism has been cleaned, many of the gears were believed to remain encrusted and corroded in the remaining stone. To chip away at this stone would certainly destroy any traces of the gears that remained. Scientists looked for other methods to "see" inside the remaining rock and to determine the full extent of the gears.

In 1971, Price joined forces with Charalampos Kararalos, professor of nuclear physics at the Greek National Center of Scientific Research and devised a way to x-ray the rock with powerful gamma rays.

Their experiment was very successful and revealed additional gears which were critical in understanding how the mechanism functioned.

Scientists from around the globe were surprised at the miniaturization of the gears - similar to work of fine watchmakers centuries later!

It was also highly complex, suggesting that the fundamental knowledge of mechanics was well advanced.

Although the device was analog (mechanical) it could calculate with the accuracy of a slide rule. It plotted angular velocities, the synodic and sideral lunar cycles, and presented the position of the known planets and moon for any date entered.

Aside from being an engineering mystery, the device showed that the designers understood that the sun was the center of the local system - not the Earth.

This view would later be worthy of imprisonment or even death by the geocentric Roman Catholics of later centuries.

The fragments show that the original instrument carried at least four large areas of inscription: outside the front door, inside the back door, on the plate between the two back dials and on the parapegma plates near the front dial.

The main inscriptions are in a sorry state and only short snatches of them can be read. To provide an idea of their condition it need only be said that in some cases a plate has completely disappeared, leaving behind an impression of its letters, standing up in a mirror image, in relief on the soft corrosion products on the plate below.

 It is remarkable that such inscriptions can be read at all.

But even from the evidence of a few complete words one can get an idea of the subject matter.

**The sun is mentioned several times, and the planet Venus once

**Terms are used that refer to the stations and retro gradations of planets

**The ecliptic is named

**Pointers, apparently those of the dials, are mentioned

**A line of one inscription significantly records "76 years, 19 years"

(This refers to the well-known Calippic cycle of 76 years, which is four times the Metonic cycle of 19 years, or 235 synodic (lunar) months)

**The next line includes the number "223," which refers to the eclipse cycle of 223 lunar months

Putting together the information gathered so far, it seems reasonable to suppose that the whole purpose of the Antikythera device was to mechanize just this sort of cyclical relation, which was a strong feature of ancient astronomy.

Other functions provided by this device were described as:

**A 365 day calendar which favored in a leap year every four years

**Prediction of solar and lunar eclipses

**A star almanac which showed when various constellations of the Greek zodiac would move across the sky

Definitely, a wonder machine?!