Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time
io9.com
io9.com
I think one lesson here is that when the society does not value technology, technology suffers. It does not evolve on its own but needs encouragement and support. Just having smart people is not enough.
I sometimes wonder what our life would have been had our ancestors started focusing on science and technology earlier, like if the scientific revolution had occurred several centuries before it did. We could have been much, much farther advanced -- or we could be living in a new stone age, I do not know.
I wonder if we have seen the last collapse of civilization? Will our descendants marvel at the wonders left in our remains and chalk our decline up to our own moral failing? Will they condemn us for not following their doctrines?
"Such wonders these people made! But they were never willing to question their gods of democracy. Even as their technology grew more awe-inspiring, their governments grew more insane and profligate, until the whole structure collapsed. What mighty and foolish people!"
Hmm.. there were no mobs involved, the first destruction is attributed to Caesar at around 48BC.
I appears that the library was then rebuild and destroyed again in 648AD
... Burning and destruction of the Library of Alexandria was reported to be the first act of sacking after Amr ibn al 'Aas forces entered the city. It was also said that the Library's collection was still substantial enough at this late date to provide six months' worth of fuel for the baths. From (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria)
Without having a transcript of that particular cosmos episode I would not go so far as to say Sagan was full of shit. Do you have it ? Is that a literal quote ?
the mechanism could be used to predict the month, day and hour of an eclipse, and even accounted for leap years.
The concept of leap years is part of our calendar system but that was invented far after this device was created. Yet, that type of accuracy is simply glossed over. Perhaps the device actually accounted for leap years in their ancient calender system or perhaps the somewhere in the chain from researcher to writer someone failed to understand that leap years having nothing to do with eclipses so it's a non problem. But, the lack of details suggests someone did not really care.
When most people know how to make something that technology is rarely lost but consider how many accidental deaths it would take to set something like CPU fabrication technology back 10 years. Realistically is probably not a real threat, but there is little redundancy in much of our society.
Aristarchus, who lived through most of the 3rd century BC, identified the length of the sidereal year with reasonable accuracy and is also the first person that we know of who argued that the earth rotated around the sun, among other insights. Knowing the exact periods of the terrestrial and lunar orbits would obviously have been a necessity for constructing this wondrous machine.
According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. On this system, the average Roman year would have had 366¼ days over four years, giving it an average drift of one day per year relative to any solstice or equinox. Macrobius describes a further refinement wherein, for 8 years out of 24, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days. This refinement averages the length of the year to 365¼ days over 24 years. In practice, intercalations did not occur schematically according to these ideal systems, but were determined by the pontifices. So far as can be determined from the historical evidence, they were much less regular than these ideal schemes suggest. They usually occurred every second or third year, but were sometimes omitted for much longer, and occasionally occurred in two consecutive years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
I think what the blog writer meant was that they device accounted for the length of the sidereal year accurately...perhaps they calculated exact dates from the nearest solstice or equinox?
But more sophisticated technological development often has several intermediate steps that aren't useful; so I agree that it needs to be valued in itself for progress to occur.
The precision machinery of this ancient device was probably used in very few practical products; therefore the skillbase was very fragile and easily lost. Even this ancient device itself would probably only have been used by administrators, who needed to announce the Games.
Of course, it also would have been horrendously expensive, in terms of man-hours for creating it, and also in terms of the years of practice required to attain that level of skill. Only kings could afford it; a niche market.
A bit of friendly competition helps innovation as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
submitted to HN 425 days ago:
Gears were already used in India as early as 2600 BC, Aristotle described gears in his lifetime - about 400 BC, and Archimedes' worm wheel dates from about 200 BC. In 40 BC Vitruvius described a grain mill powered by a water wheel and gear transmission, and in 28 BC someone equipped a carriage with an odometer.
Brian Dunning devoted an episode of Skeptoid to the Antikythera Mechanism: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184
Also, your initial statement is sine dicendo, therefore useless and rather questions the reason of your comment.
Obviously the Antikythera mechanism is impressive because of the size and detail of the gears and their usage for computation.
The reason for my comment that our ancestors were not as stupid as some contemporary people think, was in reaction on another post which stated that the Antikythera Mechanism was probably just a hundred-year old clock thrown overboard in recent times (I should have quoted that comment for clarity).
Some people cannot fathom that ancient people could realize impressive feats, just like we can. Take for example the pyramids: "the old Egyptians could never have build themselves, they must have gotten extraterrestrial help". This condescending view is also propagated by Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods' books.
It's a contender in the list of 'biggest pseudo scientific bs', runner up is the scientology junk.
"Romans were the first to invent mass production. They figured out how to use water wheels to create a factory flour mill."
Amusing comment.
Some time ago while looking at some painting in Florence depicting Ascension of Jesus I had following idea:
Time travel is actually physically possible only very hard to come up with. Christ was rouge time traveler who wanted to pose as god (like in 'Behold The Man') and got himself into a mess. Angels were rescue team that were to revive him and bring him back, but unfortunately the myth that our unfortunate traveler had started screwed up development of human thought so much that development of our science was delayed and took completely different path, far away from any ideas that might lead us to time travel before earth will be totally forgotten (Asimov's foundation like) or destroyed by future generations.
Since Jesus and angels that took him will land somewhere in the future there actually might be second coming. Sort of. i hope we will be able to compare notes on development on human thought then.
A clock is a single-purpose computing device; it's certainly not a general-purpose computing device, which is what most people when they speak of a "computer".
"Though nearly 95 percent of these have been deciphered by experts, there as not been a publication of the full text of the inscription."
Has anyone been able to find any of this text published anywhere?