The curator of the Science Museum in London built a working copy of the Antikythera mechanism, which is called the world's first computer created in the 2nd century. BC e. In 1902, during underwater archaeological work near the Greek island of Antikythera, among the remains of a Roman ship that sank around 65 AD, rusted and broken parts of a mechanism were found. According to historians, the device, which began to be called simply by the name of the island - Antikythera - was made in the second half of the 2nd century BC. e.
Work on the Antikythera research began only in the 1950s, but for another half century, the purpose of the complex mechanism remained a mystery. The device seemed all the more surprising because with the end of Antiquity, European civilization learned to make mechanisms of a similar degree of complexity only in the late Middle Ages.
In 2006, thanks to a comprehensive study of the fragments of the mechanism using high-resolution photography, X-ray tomography and three-dimensional modeling, scientists managed to understand what kind of device it was and what it was intended for.
It became clear that the 37 interconnected bronze gears of Antikythera are a kind of mechanical calendar, which with astounding accuracy for its time predicts the movements of the planets visible to the naked eye, the dates of the Olympic Games, as well as solar and lunar eclipses. Antikythera helped determine both the dates of agricultural work and the time of the onset of religious holidays.
Only now has the former curator of the Science Museum in London, Michael Wright, managed to construct a working copy of Antikythera, Chaskor reports. The device turned out to have a simple interface with a single control knob, behind which is hidden a very complex mechanism that allows you to calculate the movements of the five planets and the solar-lunar cycle.
On the front panel of the device there is a "dial" with the Greek zodiac cycle and the Egyptian calendar. There are also five arrows pointing to the position of the planets. The rear panel allows you to follow the 19-year solar-lunar cycle, the lower one - the 76-year cycle of the Olympic Games and the dates of eclipses.
