The Antikythera mechanism,
one of today's biggest dilemmas, which still amazes scientists.
Image: Cardiff University/EPA/REX/Shutterstock.com
Created centuries ago and so
advanced that it is considered the first analog computer created by man, a mechanism
dated between 250 and 100 BC.
The Antikythera mechanism,
takes its name from the Greek island where it was found, inside a wreck, of a
shipwreck that occurred at the end of the first century b.C.
A group of sponge fishermen
found the wreck in 1901. they had lost their way due to a storm and took refuge
on the island of Antikythera. On this occasion they noticed the wreck of a ship
used for the transport of valuable objects, including bronze statues in marble,
at a depth of over 40 meters off the island
Many researchers have tried
to understand what it could be used for. The most accredited theory has it that
it is a sophisticated Greek planetarium that was used to calculate the sunrise,
the lunar phases, the movements of the planets, days of the week, equinoxes,
and probably even the dates of the Olympic Games.
The Greek archaeologist
Valerio Stais, Director of the Athenian archaeological museum, examined the
mechanism in 1902. He examined the artifacts recovered from the wreck and
noticed that a block of stone contained in a wooden box was actually a
mechanism encrusted and corroded by water and marine animals. Three main parts
and dozens of minor fragments of the mechanism had survived.
What the archaeologist
discovered were a series of toothed wheels covered with inscriptions, all part
of an elaborate clockwork mechanism.
The original mechanism was about 12 by 6 inches in size, as thick as a book and built in copper and mounted in a wooden frame.It was covered with over two thousand characters of writing, of which, approximately ninety-five percent has now been decrypted. It was such a complex mechanism that some scholars argued that it could not be as old as the wreck.Other experts said that the remains of the mechanism could be traced back to a planetary, an astrolabe.
Eventually, in 1951 the
question began to be clarified. 
The English professor Derek
John De Solla Price decided to study the mechanism and after twenty-year long
research, he discovered the original functioning was that of a lunisolar
calendar.
Image: Wikipedia
The mechanisms were operated
manually and were able to reproduce a ratio like that of the motion of the moon
in relation to the sun: 254 sidereal revolutions every nineteen solar years.This ratio was reproduced
with the use of about twenty toothed wheels together with a mechanism that made
it possible to obtain a rotation at a speed equal to the sum or the difference
of the two given rotations.
(Image by Tony Freeth, Images First Ltd)
The studies have continued over
the past two decades. Recently a team of scientists from the University of
Cardiff have studied the X-ray mechanism, finding an inscription confirming the
instrument's purpose theorized by professor Derek John De Solla Price .
Recent studies were able to
conclude that the mechanism was built in the Greek colony of Syracuse (Sicily -
Italy).
Today the mechanism is kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
