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The Antikythera Mechanism. Housed at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.


Built around the beginning of the 1st century BCE, the Antikythera Mechanism built by the Greeks may be the oldest known analog computer in human history, and there’s an enduring mystery surrounding what it was used for. because parts are missing.

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I read the long story in Popular Mechanics of its apparent origin, discovery after residing at the bottom of the Aegean for 2000 years, and ongoing analysis by researchers. It was found by sponge divers at the turn of the 20th century.

Only one-third of of the roughly shoebox size mechanism, spread across 82 fragments of varying sizes, has been found in 100 feet of water at the bottom of the Aegean Sea, off the coast of the Island Antikythera.

Milled with millimeter precision, likely using ancient tools like vertical lathes and bow drills, the device contained dozens of gear wheels that operated together in a dizzying display of astronomical information.

With insights gleaned from the fragments that remain, scientists know that a hand-cranked dial on its front side tracked the motion of the sun, the moon, and the other five planets known to antiquity: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The other side of the device housed two more circular dials. The upper dial reconciled the mismatch in periods between the lunar month and solar year, while the lower dial calculated both lunar and solar eclipses. It even contained a separate, smaller dial for marking athletic events like the Olympic Games.