Latest / The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History
The Antikythera Mechanism: An Ancient Greek Computer
In 1901, sponge divers off the coast of Antikythera hauled up a corroded bronze lump from a Roman shipwreck. It took decades of research, including early X-ray imaging and modern CT scanning, to reveal that this object was a geared astronomical computer — the Antikythera mechanism. Dating to around 100 BCE, it could predict solar and lunar eclipses, track the positions of the sun, moon, and planets, and even model the irregular motion of the moon using a pin-and-slot mechanism that mimicked the epicyclic theory of Hipparchus. This episode dives into the discovery of the mechanism, the…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.