Technology Lost to Time Pt. I: Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera Mechanism. A hand powered orrery used on Greek ships to predict astronomical positions and could even predict eclipses decades in advance. It is described as the world’s first true analogue computer.

Of all the wacky shenanigans the Greeks got up to, what with fighting the Persians enough times that Alexander the Great said, “Screw it. I’ll do it myself,” and doing philosophy for fun, they somehow found the time to bring humanity farther forward than it would go for thousands of years.

Sometimes I feel like they just did all this to dunk on everyone else, but then I remember something about the Greeks that spilled over to Italy once Rome decided to plagiarize their “whole vibe”: They weren’t dunking on everyone else, they were dunking on each other. Greeks of all stripes spent time warring, conquering, proselytizing, and out-philosophy-ing each other every chance they got. Athens vs. Sparta. Athens vs. Athens. Socrates vs. Athens. Thebes vs. Sparta. Argos vs. Sparta….I’m starting to notice a pattern of antagonists.

The best part is that on an individual level, these intellectuals competed with each other constantly, vying for the most outlandish take on the nature of reality more often than not, save for Diogenes, who dunked on Alexander the Great and Plato for kicks.

That being said, I was unable to find the inventor of this fantastic device with all its complex inner workings. The Greeks were record keepers, and since we know the name of the guy who calculated the circumference of Earth (Eratosthenes, for those who were curious), I find it dubious that they wouldn’t have recorded the name of the guy who invented the computer. I mean, that feels pretty important. And you can imagine the excitement researchers felt when they discovered that this hunk of shipwreck they’d dredged up off the coast of the island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea, hence the name, had a gear in 1902 by archaeologist Valarics Stais. It wasn’t pirate booty, but it was sunken treasure.

maybe 150 BC…. To be honest no one quite knows, but it’s been narrowed down to about the time Julius Caesar was kicking the opposition, meaning Rome, all up and down the Mediterranean and the wider Empire…I mean Republic. Sorry, Augustus.

Based on this dating, part of me feels the need, though it’s more of a desperate wish, that these things found themselves on Roman triremes and that Julius Caesar beheld one of these beauties at least once. But that may just be my personal historical head canon.

Based on analysis, it was found that the inscriptions were referencing astronomical movements through the zodiac, so all the astrology girls in the world can go ahead and take that as their one and only win. With 37 bronze gears, it followed the irregular orbit of the moon and tracked the path of the sun in the sky, unknowingly perhaps tracking the earth’s tilt with a bit of funky math and geometry, since the sun doesn’t exactly orbit the earth. The movement of the moon, along with its velocity as relating to its perigee and apogee was studied by Hipparchus of Rhoads, and it’s speculated that he was consulted in the machine’s construction, though I would hesitate to give him inventor status, as he lived after it was supposedly first conjured up. Though perhaps he did lend a hand to some improvements regarding its accuracy and precision. He gets contributor status, though I hesitate to say that he invented it whole cloth. There’s also speculation that portions of the mechanism are missing, and that it could also track the five classically known planets as well, though I won’t weigh in on that. The next time something like this was dreamt up would be during the Renaissance by Richard of Wallingford and Giovanni de’ Dondi in the fourteenth century.

I find it absolutely wild that something this complex was invented by the Greeks, even if the name of the inventor is lost to time. As an aspiring inventor, it brings me a fierce pride to see the wonders people conjured up in the past. It’s proof that they were far more than the backwards savages we tend to think of when we imagine people of antiquity. I can only hope to follow in their footsteps one day.

And I most certainly intend to.