For 70 years, the best scientists in the West have been unraveling the principle of a computing device created in the second century BC. The Antikythera Mechanism is proof that ancient scientists sometimes outnumbered civilizations that came after them in technical knowledge.
Around 70 BC. From the island of Rhodes, presumably in the direction of Rome, a ship follows with valuable cargo: expensive textiles, wine, oils, incense, gold, jewelry and trinkets of all sorts. Surely high-ranking merchants, the elite of the Greco-Roman trading world, as well as the soldiers who guarded the treasures, are sailing on the ship. All of them become victims of the wreck - the ship flies into the coastal cliffs of Antikythera Island and sinks.
Useless Treasure or Anachronism?
In 1900, on the coast of the island, a team of sponge catchers from Symi stopped to wait out the storm. Having nothing to do, they put on diving suits and began to dive. One of the catchers, named Alice Stadiatos, once again rose to the surface with the news: at the bottom he saw "a pile of rotting corpses." So at a depth of 60 meters, the skeleton of a ship was discovered. On the same evening, the divers raised the statue's hand and several small objects to the surface.
Back at Symi, a local archaeologist convinced the hunters to report the find to the government. The work on lifting antiquities from the depths, which was supervised by the Naval Ministry and the Ministry of Education of Greece, lasted from November 1900 to September 30, 1901. In the process, one diver died, and two more remained disabled. The most valuable finds were sculptures: the head of a philosopher, the image of Hercules, the Antikythera youth (ephebus) and others.
The head of a philosopher.
Antikythera Ephebus.
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In the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, they were collected from a mass of debris and fragments. Ephebus was much older than the estimated time of the crash: about 340 BC. e. That is, it was already a treasure at that time - which confirms the high status of the ship and its cargo. But then the Greeks did not immediately understand what was the largest loot on this ship.
On May 17, 1902, archaeologist Valerios Stais examined the shapeless pieces of bronze covered with layers of patina, wondering what kind of statue details they might have been when he saw the patina of gears.
The Antikythera mechanism, as it was called a year later in the first scientific publication, came to us in 4 pieces: a huge fragment A, containing 27 gears, and three more (B, C, D), one gear in each. The mechanism was once packed in a wooden box, which completely dissolved in sea water over 2,000 years.
Stais, who discovered the mechanism, suggested that it could be an astronomical clock. But starting to clear the mechanism, the researchers realized that it was something more complicated, and considered the find to be some kind of anachronism. "Well, the ancient Greeks could not solve the astronomical problems over which the Europeans fought for centuries," the scientists counted. From 1903 to 1930, there were several articles about the mechanism, but by and large, researchers simply did not know what to do with it. At the same time, he was definitely not a fake - it is impossible to forge a patina of two millennia.
The Greeks are making European science
In 1951, the English physicist Professor Derek de Solla Price resumed the study of the mechanism. After conducting an X-ray study, he built the first circuit. More than twenty years later, she entered his scientific work "Greek gears: a calendar computer from 80 BC. e. " (1974). And a few years later, the first mechanical model of the ancient Greek miracle of technology was built.
The Antikythera Mechanism is considered the first analog computer designed to calculate and predict the positions of celestial bodies. Until then, the only known such mechanism was the famous Archimedes globe. Cicero in the 1st century BC e. in the dialogue "About the State" he put into the mouth of one of the characters a description of the sphere invented by Archimedes, "on which the movements of the Sun, Moon and five stars, called wandering, were represented" (meaning planets).
Globe of Archimedes.
The uniqueness of the invention was, according to Cicero, in the fact that Archimedes “figured out how to preserve unequal and different paths during dissimilar movements during one revolution. When this sphere was in motion, it happened that on this ball of bronze the moon replaced the sun for as many revolutions as in how many days it replaced it in the sky itself, as a result of which the same eclipse of the sun occurred in the sky of the sphere. But Archimedes' invention was not the only one: as the same Cicero wrote ("On the nature of the gods", II, 34), a similar "sphere", "individual turns of which reproduce what is happening in the sky with the Sun, Moon and five planets in different days and nights”was created by the astronomer, the Stoic philosopher Posidonius.
The mechanism was set in motion by rotating the handle on the body. The large four-spoke wheel, clearly visible in the fragment, is the driving wheel. The dial of the front panel had many concentric scales: the movement of the Sun, Moon and five planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury) according to the signs of the Zodiac, as well as the phases of the Moon were shown.
Front Panel.
On the back panel there were two large dials and three small ones, showing the cycles of correspondence between the movements of the Sun and the Moon. They were used to calculate actual dates, predict eclipses, calculate dates for religious holidays and the beginning of the Greek Games: Isthmian, Olympic, Nemean, and Pythian.
The signs of the zodiac were also featured in the mechanism not for beauty. The Antikythera computer was also used to predict the future. Astrology in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome was (as it is today) a huge industry. The presence of such a mechanism in an astrologer could make him rich for life. By the way, let us note that the Antikythera mechanism also allowed a retrospective analysis of astronomical events: by setting the date on it, it was possible to rotate the handle not only forward, but also backward, assessing the position of the stars at some point in the past.
Rear panel.
How did it all look at work? The most accurate reconstruction created by Michael Wright in 2007 is in this video.
For example, the gears responsible for the movement of the moon in the Antikythera mechanism are linked to each other with a certain axis offset. According to the second law of Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630), the Moon during its orbit moves at different speeds - this is taken into account in the Antikythera mechanism, and it is this fact that indirectly indicates the place of its creation.
The theory of the motion of the moon, which took into account (albeit not with full accuracy) its different speeds, was developed in antiquity by the astronomer Hipparchus (190 - 120 BC). As we know from the updated data on the age of the Antikythera mechanism, it was created in 150-100 BC. e.; this suggests that Hipparchus or his disciples had a hand in the creation of the mechanism.
In addition, the ship carrying the mechanism was, as I mentioned, from the island of Rhodes - among the wreckage were found the remains of a Rhodes-style vase. Rhodes in this era was the largest scientific and cultural center, it was here that the Colossus stood, and the great scientists Hipparchus and the author of the "sphere" Posidonius (139 - 50 BC), mentioned by Cicero, lived here. Finally, according to recent calculations, the astronomical calendar of the Antikythera Mechanism most closely matches the real position of the planets, if they are observed at 33 - 37 degrees north latitude. Rhodes is located between 35.85 and 36.50 degrees. It all fits!
What happened to us: where did the knowledge of the past and other similar mechanisms disappear?
It was in the III-I centuries BC that Greek science made a huge leap forward - largely thanks to Archimedes. He was assassinated in 212 BC. e. during the capture by the Romans of his hometown of Syracuse. His planetarium was taken to Rome, where it was kept. After Cicero, the globe of Archimedes was mentioned by Roman writers more than once, as evidence of the engineering genius of antiquity, then its traces are lost. It is also known that Archimedes wrote a separate treatise On the Making of Spheres, a guide to making such planetarium models; however, it is lost.
Hipparchus at the Alexandrian observatory.
The history of the Antikythera Mechanism is the story of the death of the Greek civilization, along with much of the knowledge of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Arab world that it collected and developed. The first mechanical and astronomical clocks began to appear in Europe in the 13-14 centuries. The first "astrarium", showing the movement of planets on the dials, was designed by Giovanni de Dondi in Padua in 1348-1364, but in terms of complexity and accuracy it did not even come close to the Antikythera mechanism. The very first model of the universe (planetarium), similar to the Archimedes' globe, was created only in 1704 in Britain.
Where could both the globe of Archimedes and the sphere of Posidonius disappear - valuable things that would obviously have been preserved by any invaders: after all, the Romans also took the globe out of Syracuse? However, there is a simple detail - they could be appreciated by those who knew what it was and how to handle it. Thus, researchers confirm that working with the Antikythera mechanism required a special specialist who could adjust the device and interpret its readings - an ordinary Roman or Greek nobleman or ruler did not have the full knowledge necessary to read such a device. And bronze has always been a very expensive metal. Therefore, with the loss of relevant knowledge - especially after the capture of Rome by the Visigoths in the 5th century AD. e. - the existing globes and planetariums were, perhaps, simply melted down into weapons or coins.
Boris Zamedin