All true, and still it is amazing.
Comment on Oldest computer
Gacrux@lemm.ee 4 months ago
to clarify, this machine is way less impressive than what a lot of media claim it is. the greeks had hundreds of years of stargazing and records to figure out a model of the cosmos, and this is basically their whole model in a mechanism. unfortunately, at the time this thing was made, their model was pretty far off and they couldn’t come up with a better one due to philosophical reasons (the earth is the center! the orbits of the planets must be some sort of perfect circles!).
anyway, this thing is somewhat impressive technically, but is really bad in terms of engineering:
- the teeth of the gears are triangular. there is a part of the mechanism that is super elaborate and calculates very precisely the motion of the moon and how it slows down and speeds up occasionally, but because of the triangular teeth, whether or not this actually worked is debatable.
- the mechanism used crown gears, which are pretty bad because they don’t mesh well with the regular gears.
- some of the gears are put under a lot of strain, particularly gear d1, a small gear that sits at the end of the gear chain b2 -> c1 -> c2 -> d1 (which gets faster and faster)
- the mechanism has a lot of spacers soldered into place and rivets that were hammered in, making disassembly rather difficult. however some of the components are fastened in by pins.
- the main gear b1 (the large one with the cross spokes you see in the picture) was built in a very weird way: the gear itself is a ring, and the spokes are added on later, connected to the ring with dovetail joints which aren’t the easiest thing to make when your level of tech is a file and some sandpaper. in fact, whoever made the mechanism probably screwed up one of the joints and had to rivet in an extra metal plate so it wouldn’t fall off.
- the gear trains for the moon is built in a very weird way: first the main axis b drives 2 separate gear trains that pass through the main plate, only for one gear train to drive a turntable (e3 and e4) and the other to drive a shaft (e2 and e5) that goes through the center of the turntable. e5 will then drive a mechanism on the turntable which has an output shaft… that once again goes through the center of the turntable and the e2-e5 shaft (e1 and e6). then finally e1 drives b3, which drives a shaft that goes right through the center of the b axis. so now, you have 3 pairs of gears on the e axis whose shafts all go through each other like some matryoshka doll, as well as a hole right through the b axis to display the position of the moon.
- the metonic and saros spirals on the back need resetting once in a while, because the pointers move in spirals and can’t automatically reset once they hit the end.
we knew that the greeks had a model of the cosmos before we discovered this (i think). the main thing this mechanism shows is that the ancient greeks possibly pioneered gear mechanisms, abd the knowledge was then passed on and on and went through times like the islamic golden age before coming back to europe in the form of clockwork and watchmaking.
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 4 months ago
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
While there are a lot of features that I would have done differently, but I’ve got a copy of the Machinists Handbook and a trade school education. Imagine the guy who had to invent this thing as he went. dude was the Wozniak of his day.
Gacrux@lemm.ee 4 months ago
anthoer thing is that this machine clearly wasn’t the first draft. not only do we have those mentions of “spheres”, but there aren’t that many mistakes we see in the construction of the mechanism (apart from the dovetail joint). clearly the layout of the gears was planned beforehand, or they did trial-and-error with the gears on another version of the mechanism.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Yeah Chris of youtube channel Clickspring has said during his replica build that there are features that suggest the maker was trying to make the mechanism more compact, like some gears that are friction fit on their axles rather than pinned to leave their tops flat, which suggests this wasn’t the maker’s first rodeo.
The thing that blows my mind the most about the Antikythera mechanism is that we don’t have anything else remotely like it in the archeological record from anywhere near the time it must have been made. You can imagine a simpler but still useful gear-based calendar device, maybe similar to this one but with fewer functions, being made before this. But no evidence of them survives to the modern day.
It would be like exploring a Civil War site and finding the corroded remains of an Apple Newton. While relatively primitive compared to later, more successful PDAs and smart phones, it’s still a surprisingly functional machine and way more sophisticated than you thought possible for the context you found it in that you wonder if it’s not significantly newer than its surroundings.
Gacrux@lemm.ee 4 months ago
that is true. the mechanism shows us that they definitely had some mechanism making culture going on. my point is that this sort of thing was 100% doable for their level of tech, and that it is us who have misunderstood history.
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 4 months ago
can it play doom though?
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
If you can play doom on 16 billion crabs, you can play doom on this.
OrderedChaos@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Neat. But how many humans could run the game? Or horses. Or…
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
This is amazing
Gacrux@lemm.ee 4 months ago
if you will it hard enough it can even play crysis.
seriously, most of the hype for this thingy comes from some random documentary directors who thought the ancient greeks were as intelligent as monkeys and such. anyone who says this is an alien invention is basically insulting any intelligent life who has come far enough to go interstellar
killingspark@feddit.org 4 months ago
Sir please keep this USB stick away from the machine
Whispering into Radio We’ve got another nerd here!