how the ancients grappled with ideas about determinism and human destiny?
E. “We have gear trains from the 9th century in Baghdad used for simpler displays of the solar
and lunar motions relative to one another — they use eight gears,’ said Frangois Charette, a
historian of science in Germany who wrote an editorial accompanying a new study of the
mechanism two weeks ago in the journal Nature.
In this case, we have more than 30 gears. To
see it on a computer animation makes it mind-boggling. There is no doubt it was a
technological masterpiece.”
F. The device was probably built between 100 and 140 BC, and the understanding of
astronomy it displays seems to have been based on knowledge developed by the Babylonians
around 300-700 BC, said Mike Edmunds, a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in
Britain. He led a research team that reconstructed what the gear mechanism would have
looked like by using advanced three- dimensional-imaging technology. The group also decoded
a number of the inscriptions. The mechanism explores the relationship between lunar months
__ the time it takes for the moon to cycle through its phases, say, full moon to the full moon -
‐
and calendar years. The gears had to be cut precisely to reflect this complex relationship; 19
calendar years equal 235 lunar months.
G. By turning the gear mechanism, which included what Edmunds called a beautiful system of
epicyclic gears that factored in the elliptical orbit of the moon, a person could check what the
sky would have looked like on a date in the past, or how it would appear in the future. The
mechanism was encased in a box with doors in front and back covered with inscriptions — a
sort of instruction manual. Inside the front door were pointers indicating the date and the
position of the sun, moon, and zodiac, while opening the back door revealed the relationship
between calendar years and lunar months, and a mechanism to predict eclipses.
H. “If they needed to know when eclipses would occur, and this related to the rising and setting
of stars and related them to dates and religious experiences, the mechanism would directly
help ,” said Yanis Bitsakis, a physicist at the University of Athens who co-wrote the Nature
paper. “It is a mechanical computer. You turn the handle and you have a date on the front.”
Building it would have been expensive and required the interaction of astronomer, engineers,
intellectuals, and craftspeople. Charette said the device overturned conventional ideas that the
ancient Greeks were primarily ivory tower thinkers who did not deign to muddy their hands
with technical stuff. It is a reminder, he said, that while the study of history often focuses on
written texts, they can tell us only a fraction of what went on at a particular time.
I. Imagine a future historian encountering philosophy texts written in our time ~ and an aircraft
engine. The books would tell that researcher what a few scholars were thinking today, but the
engine would give them a far better window into how technology influenced our everyday
lives. Charette said it was unlikely that the device was used by practitioners of astrology, then
still in its infancy. More likely, he said, it was bound for a mantelpiece in some rich Roman’s
home. Given that astronomers of the time already knew how to calculate the positions of the
“
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sun and the moon and to predict eclipses without the device, it would have been the equivalent
of a device built for a planetarium today __ something to spur popular interest or at least claim
bragging rights.
J. Why was the technology that went into the device lost? “The time this was built, the jackboot
of Rome was coming through,” Edmunds said. “The Romans were good at town planning and
sanitation but were not known for their interest in science.” The fact that the device was so
complex, and that it was being shipped with a number of other luxury items, tells Edmunds
that it is very unlikely to have been the one ever made. “Its sophistication is such that it can’t
have been the only one,” Edmunds said. “There must have been a tradition of making them.
We’re always hopeful a better one will surface.” Indeed, he said, he hopes that his study and
the renewed interest in the Antikythera Mechanism will prompt second looks by both amateurs
and professionals around the world. “The archaeological world may look in their cupboards and
maybe say, That isn’t a bit of rusty old metal in the cupboard.”
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