The Antikythera Mechanism | Hacker News Reader

The Antikythera Mechanism

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16 pointsughitsaaron7 comments

Clickspring on YouTube has a whole series where he tries to recreate the antikythera mechanism from scans of the original. Great channel.

I'm Greek, I've been to the National museum of Athens several times and love the mechanism, the replication attemps, etc Clickspring though has actually made me understand and feel the challenges to build that thing. My personal view (please take it with a tablespoon of salt) is that Clickspring has made further contributions in understanding the underlying technological challenges than many academic papers and diatribes have done.

I mean he's literally an author on a paper about the mechanism.

I have to admit that my grievances were mostly about Greek academics.

Always a great and humbling remember of the importance of political & economic prioritization of (proper & unfettered) scientific investigation. This cognitive & technological peak that the Greeks achieved was not to be seen again anywhere on our planet for ~1700 years.

I don't think I agree that impressive scientific advancement on this level had been unseen for 1700 years. There were many impressive insights the Greeks had learned (just how the Pythagoreans had gleamed the relationship between numbers/ratios and music without modern technology to measure the frequency is impressive enough), but other cultures have made their contributions too.

Building the first analog computer indicates a much more advanced scientific culture than astronomy, mathematics, mechanics etc. as individual areas of study which other cultures certainly had. Your example of the mathematical underpinnings of music is ironic because it is something other cultures arrived at as well.

So have other cultures made important contributions? Of course they have, and in many areas of study they excelled over the Greeks, but unless your definition of advancement is something other than increasing understanding of & power over our environment, then it is the case that there was nothing like this for ~17 centuries. Obviously, happy to be proven wrong via specific examples, etc.

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