The Antikythera mechanism has befuddled historians and scientists for more than 120 years. We now have an even better appreciation for the sophistication of the device and the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks.
In 1900 diver Elias Stadiatis, clad in a copper and brass helmet and a heavy canvas suit, emerged from the sea shaking in fear and mumbling about a “heap of dead naked people.” He was among a group of Greek divers from the Eastern Mediterranean island of Symi who were searching for natural sponges. They had sheltered from a violent storm near the tiny island of Antikythera, between Crete and mainland Greece.
Ancient Astronomy We know the Greeks of that era were accomplished naked-eye astronomers. They viewed the night sky from a geocentric perspective—every night, as Earth turned on its axis, they saw the dome of stars rotating. The stars’ relative positions remained unchanged, so the Greeks called them the “fixed stars.” These early astronomers also saw bodies moving against the background of stars: the moon goes through a rotation against the stars every 27.3 days; the sun takes a year.
One of the central researchers in the early years of Antikythera research was German philologist Albert Rehm, the first person to understand the mechanism as a calculating machine. Between 1905 and 1906 he made crucial discoveries that he recorded in his unpublished research notes. He found, for instance, the number 19 inscribed on one of the surviving Antikythera fragments.
It seems that the device could be used to predict the positions of the sun, moon and planets on any specific day in the past or future. The maker of the machine would have had to calibrate it with the known positions of these bodies. A user could then simply turn a crank to the desired time frame to see astronomical predictions.
The new data surprised us. The first major breakthrough was my discovery that the mechanism predicted eclipses in addition to the motions of the astronomical bodies. This finding was connected to the inscription Rehm had found that mentioned the 223-month saros eclipse cycle. The new x-rays revealed a large, 223-tooth gear at the rear of the mechanism that turns a pointer around a dial that spirals out, making four turns in total that are divided into 223 sections, for 223 months.
The Front of the Mechanism The most prominent feature of the front of the largest fragment is the main drive wheel, which was designed to rotate once a year. It is not a flat disc like most of the other gears; this one has four spokes and is covered in puzzling features. The spokes show evidence that they held bearings: there are circular holes in them for turning axles.
Any model for the workings of the mechanism should match this description—an explanation literally inscribed onto the back cover of the device describing how the sun and planets were displayed. Yet previous models had failed to incorporate this ring system because of a technical problem that we could not solve.
We proposed that any method the Antikythera creators used would have required three criteria: accuracy, factorizability and economy. The method must be accurate to match the known period relations for Venus and Saturn, and it must be factorizable so the planets could be calculated with gears small enough to fit into the mechanism. To make the system economical, different planets could share gears if their period relations shared prime factors, reducing the number of gears needed.
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