An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists

[Foxy Brown]

A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone.

But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.

[shadowstar]

"Windows 350BC"?  

[Carisear]

i saw pictures of this in the papers -- that's pretty damn cool.  there have been some brilliant andextremely skilled people in history

[reyfer]

The Antikythera Mechanism, yeah, I remember people called Erich Von Däniken crazy when he said it was an ancient computer used in astronomy, but now, 20 years later, scientist prove he was right

[Foxy Brown]

I don't see the point of it, though. How exactly would you look at pornography or cat pictures on that thing?

[~Dan~]

The Antikythera Mechanism, yeah, I remember people called Erich Von Däniken crazy when he said it was an ancient computer used in astronomy, but now, 20 years later, scientist prove he was right

Yeah it's not new news, I've known about it for years, but I guess the methods on analysing it have improved in the last 20 years.  Now they can see inscriptions on it which they weren't able to do 20 years ago.  I expect the reconstruction of how it works is more accurate compared with the one they made 20 years ago too.

[frutillo]

it comes with a 0.0000000000000000000000043 microHz intel cpu.

how many ram does it come with?

[xerony]

This really is an impressive piece of science. Of course it was made for calculating. Not for porn
And why is everyone referring to companies that didn't even exist back then