On May 17, 1902, the first computer was discovered. However, it was not assembled in the factory of some modern company. On the contrary - it was created more than two thousand years ago in the ancient world…
A group of sponge divers came across the amazing mysterious find.
117 years ago, on their way back from Africa, a storm threatened them and they decided to wait it out, anchored on a small Greek island. During one of their dives in the area, they noticed many scattered statues on the seabed. As it later turned out, this was the site of a shipwreck of a Roman vessel that had occurred thousands of years ago.
Among the artifacts recovered from over 60 m deep were several bronze pieces that were initially thought to be part of sculptures. Two years later, an archaeologist from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens made a sensational discovery: These were parts of a complex mechanism made up of gears. In other words, the most ancient computer.
On May 17, 1902, archaeologist Valerios Stais, who was analyzing the discovered artifacts, picked up a bronze piece covered in limestone and shells. Suddenly, this lump broke apart, as the bronze was severely damaged by corrosion, and gears gleamed inside it. Stais suggested that this was a fragment of an ancient clock, and even wrote a scientific paper on the subject.
But his colleagues in the archaeological community met this publication with a knife. Stais was even accused of fraud. The scientist's critics claimed that such complex mechanical devices could not have existed in Antiquity. It was concluded that this object came to the site of the shipwreck in later times and has no relation to the sunken ship. Stais was forced to give in under the pressure of public opinion, and the mysterious object was forgotten for a long time.
The Antikythera mechanism consists of several metal components, severely damaged by the millennial stay on the seabed. Through detailed tomographic studies, it was established. that initially these were nearly 40 different gears. assembled into a functioning mechanism. The entire mechanism fit into a box with dimensions estimated at approximately 34x18x9 cm. On its front side was a “dial” with various explanatory texts, some of which have been deciphered.
The mechanism gained wide fame after the article “The Ancient Greek Computer“, published in 1959 in the magazine Scientific American by Derek de Sol Price.
The ancient device is also found in ancient chronicles, for example in Cicero in the work “On the Nature of the Gods“: “The ball, which our friend Posidonius has recently made, reproduces what happens in the sky with the Sun, the Moon and five planets on different days and nights.“
The Antikythera Mechanism itself and its working version created by scientists are stored in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Radiocarbon analysis of the mechanism determined its age in the period from 150 to 100 BC, and now scientists have studied the part of it necessary for determining eclipses. The theoretical basis of the study was the Saros cycle - a period in which a number of solar and lunar eclipses are repeated.
Saros is equal to 223 synodic months of the Moon, which is 6585.32 days, or almost 18 calendar years. In practice, ancient astronomers used Exeligmos (from the Greek ἐξέλιγμος - rotation of the wheel) - a period equal to three saros and convenient in that it forms an integer number of days - 19,756.
Scientists were able to calculate that the mechanism for predicting eclipses will show the most accurate results if, as a “reference point“ of the Saros was chosen on May 12, 205 BC. Such a discovery would allow them to conclude that the device was made at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd century BC, notes Megavselena.
However, the researchers note that this fact may determine not the date of assembly of the mechanism, but the time of development of its design.