Scrutable

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w

New work on modelling how it worked to display the ancient Greek cosmos. It's amazing, of course. Always makes me wonder how many more objects like this there must have been. Few, I should think, but it also seems unlikely it was unique.

Martin Y wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 3:04 pm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w

New work on modelling how it worked to display the ancient Greek cosmos. It's amazing, of course. Always makes me wonder how many more objects like this there must have been. Few, I should think, but it also seems unlikely it was unique.

One of my favourite things.

Surely there must have been 'component' mechanisms each doing a part of the action? And 'trials' for each of those, perhaps over a significant number of years? I can't imagine anyone designing the whole thing at one go from scratch, but I can imagine someone combining existing mechanisms.

Allo V Psycho wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:57 pm

Martin Y wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 3:04 pm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w

New work on modelling how it worked to display the ancient Greek cosmos. It's amazing, of course. Always makes me wonder how many more objects like this there must have been. Few, I should think, but it also seems unlikely it was unique.

One of my favourite things.

Surely there must have been 'component' mechanisms each doing a part of the action? And 'trials' for each of those, perhaps over a significant number of years? I can't imagine anyone designing the whole thing at one go from scratch, but I can imagine someone combining existing mechanisms.

One of the articles I've read about it mentions that the mechanism seems to rely on nested concentric spindles, and the question is how these would be makeable without the use of lathes.

Allo V Psycho wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 5:57 pm

Martin Y wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 3:04 pm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w

New work on modelling how it worked to display the ancient Greek cosmos. It's amazing, of course. Always makes me wonder how many more objects like this there must have been. Few, I should think, but it also seems unlikely it was unique.

One of my favourite things.

Surely there must have been 'component' mechanisms each doing a part of the action? And 'trials' for each of those, perhaps over a significant number of years? I can't imagine anyone designing the whole thing at one go from scratch, but I can imagine someone combining existing mechanisms.

Indeed.

The first such device just happened to sink in a shipwreck and it looked like a mature technology

"Clickspring" on YouTube has been making a replica Antikythera Mechanism, using the correct period tool, for some time. His videos are here.

It’s not very accurate though, is it?

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 10:15 pm

It’s not very accurate though, is it?

How do you mean?

Boustrophedon wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 12:28 pm

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 13, 2021 10:15 pm

It’s not very accurate though, is it?

How do you mean?

The antikythera mechanism isn’t very accurate in terms of calculating moon cycles and such. According to Exactly anyway.

Simon Winchester writing in Exactly wrote:The device, as model-tested by the legions of fascinated modern analysts, turns out to be woefully, shamefully, uselessly inaccurate. One of the pointers, which supposedly indicates the position of Mars, is on many occasions thirty-eight degrees out of true.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 12:59 pm

The antikythera mechanism isn’t very accurate in terms of calculating moon cycles and such. According to Exactly anyway.

Simon Winchester writing in Exactly wrote:The device, as model-tested by the legions of fascinated modern analysts, turns out to be woefully, shamefully, uselessly inaccurate. One of the pointers, which supposedly indicates the position of Mars, is on many occasions thirty-eight degrees out of true.

Ah. You have the Pentium P5 Antikythera Mechanism sir.

Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant is one of the coolest books I've read recently. Really nice blend of ancient history, history of science and modern investigation.

I remember there was a thread on the old place about it, where so many BSers bought a copy that the price spiked on amazon. I wishlisted it way back then, but only just got round to buying a copy.

I don’t mean to sh.t on the antikythera mechanism by the way, I just want to point out that it was far from a mature technology. I’m sure if they’d had the chance and it hadn’t sunk in a shipwreck they would have iterated and corrected for the problems it had remaining.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 7:41 pm

Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant is one of the coolest books I've read recently. Really nice blend of ancient history, history of science and modern investigation.

I remember there was a thread on the old place about it, where so many BSers bought a copy that the price spiked on amazon. I wishlisted it way back then, but only just got round to buying a copy.

I’ll have to look into that one.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:41 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 7:41 pm

Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant is one of the coolest books I've read recently. Really nice blend of ancient history, history of science and modern investigation.

I remember there was a thread on the old place about it, where so many BSers bought a copy that the price spiked on amazon. I wishlisted it way back then, but only just got round to buying a copy.

I’ll have to look into that one.

(available for £3.99 on Google Play)
ETA - also Kindle for the same...

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:41 pm

I don’t mean to sh.t on the antikythera mechanism by the way, I just want to point out that it was far from a mature technology. I’m sure if they’d had the chance and it hadn’t sunk in a shipwreck they would have iterated and corrected for the problems it had remaining.

One of the interesting points made in Decoding the Heavens was that the Antikythera mechanism almost certainly wasn't a unique object, artisanally made sure, but one of many mass-produced as luxury items. Marchant makes the case that there was a well-developed technology, probably centred in the eastern Med, which was later expressed in Islamic clockmaking which subsequently spurred on European medieval clockmaking developments. Which is much, much cooler.

Paper by "Clickspring" off YouTube and others on part of the mechanism, as published by the British Horological Institute.

https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/20 ... lendar.pdf

Videos from Cickspring here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKgdq5 ... lickspring

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:41 pm

I don’t mean to sh.t on the antikythera mechanism by the way, I just want to point out that it was far from a mature technology. I’m sure if they’d had the chance and it hadn’t sunk in a shipwreck they would have iterated and corrected for the problems it had remaining.

Well, in terms of the specifics of the astronomical predictions it made, there was a lot to learn in the ensuing thousands of years, of course. Not least the fact that the planets and stars were in a solar system rather than a terran system. The device apparently was based on Babylonian observations of the night sky, something which they did very well for religious reasons and which lots of other later peoples couldn't be arsed to do themselves.

But the point about the device isn't whether its astronomical predictions were especially accurate, but about the fact that it was a clockwork device stemming from a time when people thought there were no clockwork devices at all. Until the device was discovered, it was thought that clockwork hadn't been used in Europe until the 11th century. The fact that there was mature clockwork technology in Europe 1000 years earlier, regardless of its accuracy of function, is incredible.