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Antikythera Mechanism

INT21 said:
As for the availability of metals. The Greeks and the Romans had lots of metallic objects, from swords to armour as well as many everyday tools. So no shortage. And the device used very little material.
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Yes, yes, there was lots of metal about. Copper, iron, bronze, silver, gold etc.
However, it was proportionately more valuable then than it is now, because these days it's easier to mine, refine and manufacture. Therefore, theft of metal items would have been a common crime.
 
skinny said:
... I question the carbon dating. This level of technical precision was possible possibly 3000 years ago as far as the availability of metalurgical process is concerned, but I posit that it is far more likely that this item is a more recent creation from amongst other similar devices of more recent production.
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One key issue is that the majority of the mechanism's larger fragments were brought up from the seabed over a century ago. As far as I know, there was no attempt to map the wreck site at that time, and there was no attention given to describing what (artifact(s)) were found where within the site. In the absence of the sort of stratigraphic mapping / analysis common nowadays, all that can be said is that the fragments came from the site.

Another key issue is specifying which Antikythera wreck artifacts have been subjected to C14 analysis. Even though the collection of mechanism fragments includes pieces of its wooden case, I've never been able to find a clear claim that any of these case fragments has been radiocarbon dated.

skinny said:
I strongly doubt this thing was a once-off creation of some isolated genius ahead of his/her time 2000 years ago. Radio-carbon dating is a valid method, but it isn't infallible. The concretion evident inside the gears of the device could skew the dating.
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Depending on (a) which ancient authors' histories one chooses to believe and (b) how one cross-correlates items mentioned among the histories chosen a case can be made for at least a few such devices' existence.

Archimedes is reputed to have built an extraordinary astronomical calculator / simulator, but the few specific descriptions of his device consistently indicate it was a spherical planetarium (of which 2 specimens were allegedly taken from Syracuse by Marcellus).

There are other, far less specific, allusions to the Romans having possessed a pair of similarly sophisticated such devices as of the mid to late 1st century BCE. However, these latter allusions do not correlate with the Syracuse / Archimedes storyline, do not provide enough details about the devices to judge whether they're the same as the purported Archimedes devices or the Antikythera device, and do not clearly correlate with the estimated timeframe for the Antikythera ship's sinking.

skinny said:
Can coral concretion be carbon dated? I think it can.
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Yes - coral skeletons / concretions can be subjected to radiocarbon analysis. However, the risks for results being skewed by (e.g.) contamination are increased. Additionally, traditional C14 analysis alone is usually insufficient to determine the age of marine organic materials, because traditional methods based on atmospheric C14 ratios don't account for C14 ratios / levels in the seawater. This problem is typically addressed by conducting an additional form of radioisotopic decay test (e.g., uranium / thorium) as the primary indicator of the organic material's age.
 
Ascalon,

That article is clearly written by a prat.

...The Antikythera mechanism tends to put Babbage in his place, preceding him by a couple of millennia. And unlike Babbage, the ancient Greeks actually went ahead and built the bloody thing...

Babbage's engine was a calculating machine. A completely different concept to the Anti Kythera device.

And Babbage did build his machine. Just didn't complete it.

His big mistake was falling out with Ada.

INT21
 
The Antikythera mechanism has the world's oldest user guide inscribed on it! :D
Awesome.
 
A fascinating further video by Chris, of Clickspring fame, who continues in his project to make, from scratch, the hand-tools used to build the Antikythera Mechanism.

Excellent explanations as to how ancient technologists created case-hardened metalworking files. He has amazing patience, and a good method of explaining the required techniques.

His commentries upon the cog tooth clearance angles and variations in build methods are almost forensic in their detail and insight. Just astounding.
 
Ermintruder said:
A fascinating further video by Chris, of Clickspring fame, who continues in his project to make, from scratch, the hand-tools used to build the Antikythera Mechanism.

Excellent explanations as to how ancient technologists created case-hardened metalworking files. He has amazing patience, and a good method of explaining the required techniques.

His commentries upon the cog tooth clearance angles and variations in build methods are almost forensic in their detail and insight. Just astounding.
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You beat me to it! I was going to post that.
 
INT21 said:
Ascalon,

That article is clearly written by a prat.

...The Antikythera mechanism tends to put Babbage in his place, preceding him by a couple of millennia. And unlike Babbage, the ancient Greeks actually went ahead and built the bloody thing...

Babbage's engine was a calculating machine. A completely different concept to the Anti Kythera device.

And Babbage did build his machine. Just didn't complete it.

His big mistake was falling out with Ada.

INT21
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I think the piece is entirely tongue in cheek.
I just like the idea, and in fairness, well supported theory, that many of humankind's media and communications breakthroughs have been either prompted, subverted, or at the very least, most fully utilised, by the porn industry.
 
Ermintruder, Mythopoeika,

But it goes nowhere near the most important question.

Why was there no burst of (small) geared machinery following this for nearly 2000 years ?

If you look at the meteoric advance in all things electrical and all things in general since the beginning of the industrial revolution, particularly in the last 150 years, then this makes the Anti-Kythera episode seem singularly odd.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
Ermintruder, Mythopoeika,

But it goes nowhere near the most important question.

Why was there no burst of (small) geared machinery following this for nearly 2000 years ?

INT21
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'cos the prototype was at the bottom of the Med.?
 
INT21 said:
Ermintruder, Mythopoeika,

But it goes nowhere near the most important question.

Why was there no burst of (small) geared machinery following this for nearly 2000 years ?

INT21
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Maybe the engineering genius was on board the ship when it went down?
Or...more likely, the sheer cost and skill level required put off the people who would most likely be the commissioners of such projects.
 
Coal,

The prototype of one particular machine may have been, but not the technology that (supposedly) made it.

INT21

Looks as if we are getting crossed posts here.
 
INT21 said:
Coal,

The prototype of one particular machine may have been, but not the technology that (supposedly) made it.

INT21

Looks as if we are getting crossed posts here.
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True. But the skill required to make such a machine is not the same as the intellect required to conceive of and design it.
 
But you must agree that the concept comes first. Then the acquisition of the skills required to make it.

Plus you would have to be either an astronomer or a mathematician or both.

In short a Greek Renaissance man.

But also there is the matter of the tooling.

It is very easy in hindsight to come up with how the ancients made the tools. Easy because we know how to do it.

But to use the example of a hardened file. First you have to have the idea of changing from a single edged scraper to a tool with many cutting serrations. Then you have to have the idea of hardening it. Metallurgy didn't really get going until the first steels came along.
And the files would have to be pretty small. As would the drills.

It wasn't until the 17 century that clock makers really stated to get a grip of miniaturisation.

On one of the minature engineering sites I frequent, someone put it quite nicely.

'We make tools to make tools to make machines: and one day we may even make a project'.

INT21
 
Coal said:
But the skill required to make such a machine is not the same as the intellect required to conceive of and design it.
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I've wondered about this, and had actually presumed precisely the reverse, inasmuch as, surely the skills of understanding the design/functional outputs AND the hand-skills required for construction were indeed possessed by the same person?

Or are we saying that flawless skills in engineering draughtmanship, technical authoring & communication also existed pror to that earlier time, as well?
 
EnolaGaia,

...Historically, timekeeping has provided the initial impetus for precision machine making. The Greeks and Romans achieved sufficient timekeeping capabilities with water clocks...

Which could be calibrated astronomically, as can a Sundial.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
The Greeks and Romans achieved sufficient timekeeping capabilities with water clocks...
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But surely not (ironically) for use at sea? Or during a pilgrimage? This was by it's nature, mobile technology
 
Ermintruder,

..
Or are we saying that flawless skills in engineering draughtmanship, technical authoring & communication also existed pror to that earlier time, as well?

Oddly one of the earliest machining skills, scraping, is still used to obtain extraordinarily precise flat surfaces.
And you don't need any high precision equipment to do it.

INT21
 
Ermintruder,

..
But surely not (ironically) for use at sea? Or during a pilgrimage? This was by it's nature, mobile technology..

The problem was time. It wasn't until George Harrison came up with the Marine Chronograph that it was solved.
You can find your latitude from the Sun or stars, but you need to know what time it is to find Longitude: And the Ancient Greeks didn't have clocks.

Have you seen the drama/documentary 'Longitude' ? If not try to find it.

By the way, I didn't write the line you quoted, I got it from a previous post.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
Ermintruder,

..
But surely not (ironically) for use at sea? Or during a pilgrimage? This was by it's nature, mobile technology..

The problem was time. It wasn't until George Harrison came up with the Marine Chronograph that it was solved.
You can find your latitude from the Sun or stars, but you need to know what time it is to find Longitude: And the Ancient Greeks didn't have clocks.

Have you seen the drama/documentary 'Longitude' ? If not try to find it.

By the way, I didn't write the line you quoted, I got it from a previous post.

INT21
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My Sweet Lord! George Harrison clocks. You learn something new every day.
 
...You learn something new every day..

You sure do.

Today you learned that INT21 can also make the occasional mistake and mix up George Harrison, a player in some obscure Liverpool rock group, with the great John Harrison, who created something far more useful to humankind.

INT21:evillaugh:
 
INT21 said:
The problem was time. It wasn't until ... Harrison came up with the Marine Chronograph that it was solved.
You can find your latitude from the Sun or stars, but you need to know what time it is to find Longitude: And the Ancient Greeks didn't have clocks.
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I'm fully-aware of this. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point?

The Antikythera Mechanism was primarily a calendrical device, combined with astronomical indicators.

Therefore the known date on-board ship (or anywhere else) would be used to mechanically set it. It did not need a precise time of day in order to use it, nor was it in itself a clock (or a latitude estimator).
 
The Greeks and Romans achieved sufficient timekeeping capabilities with water clocks...
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Ermintruder said:
But surely not (ironically) for use at sea? Or during a pilgrimage? This was by it's nature, mobile technology
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Ermintruder:

The line quoted came from one of my 2016 posts. In context, it alluded to the notion that for daily timekeeping / temporal orientation purposes, the Greeks seemed satisfied with the level of precision afforded by the sundials and / or water clocks we know full well they had. The point (again, in context ... ) was that there is no corollary nor subsequent evidence the Greeks prioritized greater timekeeping precision to the extent of being motivated to create a more sophisticated device.

The Greeks' (known) mechanical timekeeping devices exploited a continuous flow of some substance (e.g., water; sand). Such continuous flow devices would have been affected by a ship's motions (e.g., rocking), and were hence far less reliable at sea than on terra firma. One advantage of more modern mechanical clocks is that their workings advance by means of a more rigidly engaging escapement - a subsidiary mechanism that converts a continuous motion or force into discrete stepwise increments. The ratcheting action of a gearwork escapement repeatedly releasing and stopping a driven gear is the source of an old clock's 'tick-tock' sound.

The Greeks were familiar with general / conceptual escapement functionality. Philo (aka Philon) of Byzantium (who pre-dated the Antikythera device) described an escapement mechanism in his Pneumatics. Philo even included a side comment about the mechanism being known in the context of Greek clocks. However, both his example (a washstand with escapement-regulated flow) and all known Greek mechanical clocks were of the continuous flow variety.

In any case, the Antikythera Mechanism is certainly not a clock.
 
Ermintruder,

The point about time was that you can't know where you are (when at sea) if you don't know what time it is.

You use a sextant. Even the crude early ones work. But you still need to know the accurate time.

But as the Greeks and others of the day tended to not go out of sight of land then they didn't have a problem in that respect.

You could use, say, a form of water clock to give you some kind of elapsed time from departure. But it would be hopeless as a navigation timepiece.

The Anti-Kythera device is more astronomical in intent.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
The Anti-Kythera device is more astronomical in intent.
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Ermintruder said:
The Antikythera Mechanism was primarily a calendrical device, combined with astronomical indicators.
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INT21 I'm not at all sure what it is we're disagreeing about?

I also fully-agree with you regarding the function/purpose of sextants: I was taught how to use one, on-board a yacht probably over 40yrs ago.

Have you watched the Clickspring tool-making video I linked to, earlier? Any thoughts? I suspect he does follow-through, as a semi-commercial technology maker, and actually builds his projects.
 
Bonjour, matelot,

Chris (Clickspring) does indeed build his projects. You should follow his series on buildin a clock.

I have seen the first episode of his Anti-Kythera build. But have yet to catch up on his progress.

...But surely not (ironically) for use at sea? Or during a pilgrimage? This was by it's nature, mobile technology..

I think the confusion came from this line.

I took it that you were implying that the AK devise could not be used for navigation (I agree) but the bit about 'mobile technology' threw me.

I believe we are essentially on the same page.

INT21
 
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