antikythera mechanism working model

[6], The mechanism was operated by turning a small hand crank (now lost) which was linked via a crown gear to the largest gear, the four-spoked gear visible on the front of fragment A, the gear named b1. [29], All of the items retrieved from the wreckage were transferred to the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens for storage and analysis. [23] In addition, it has recently been argued that the astronomical events on the Parapegma of the Antikythera Mechanism work best for latitudes in the range of 33.3–37.0 degrees north;[45] the island of Rhodes is located between the latitudes of 35.85 and 36.50 degrees north. [5][8][67], The Metonic train is driven by the drive train b1, b2, l1, l2, m1, m2, and n1, which is connected to the pointer. The National Geographic documentary series Naked Science had an episode dedicated to the Antikythera Mechanism entitled "Star Clock BC" that aired on 20 January 2011. Reviewing his earlier publications, he clarifies obscure points and shows how recent study by others supports his arrangement of the display. The following three Egyptian months are inscribed in Greek letters on the surviving pieces of the outer ring:[52], The other months have been reconstructed, although some reconstructions of the mechanism omit the five days of the Egyptian intercalary month. Network Awesome. The Antikythera Mechanism used a combination of adhesives, pins, and friction fits as fasteners. [80] Fragments of a geared calendar attached to a sundial, from the 5th or 6th century Byzantine Empire, have been found; the calendar may have been used to assist in telling time. The Antikythera Mechanism: A Calendar Computer from ca. They came up with a compact and feasible solution to the question of planetary indication. [22], The knowledge of this technology was lost at some point in antiquity. Nobody's sure who built the incredible Antikythera Mechanism, an intricate and fascinating ancient Greek artifact that served as a type of calendar. If the two dials are synchronised correctly, their front panel display is essentially the same as Wright's. Once the storm passed, they decided to scout the area for sponges be… Finally, this fragment contains some back door inscriptions. He mentions a quote from an ancient papyrus: ...a voice comes to you speaking. Freeth, Tony; Jones, Alexander; Steele, John M.; Bitsakis, Yanis (31 July 2008). The two gears have different centres of rotation, so the pin must move back and forth in the slot. The Mechanism is the first analogue computer ever created and the oldest scientific instrument in the world - by a very long way. A new, interactive model of the Antikythera Mechanism is now part of the exhibition VOYAGE-Greek Shipbuilding and Seafaring from antiquity to modern times at the Museum Herakleidon, and the special section devoted to the most complex mechanism of antiquity (An ancient Greek computer).The full-size model, exact to 0.02 mm, was created by Dr. Markos Skoulatos, PhD in Physics. Smithsonian. Investigations into the object were dropped until British science historian and Yale University professor Derek J. de Solla Price became interested in it in 1951. [62] The inscriptions on each one of the four divisions are:[5][8], The Saros dial is the main lower spiral dial on the rear of the mechanism. I had a friend in honours year computer science who did a project on tomography of the antikythera mechanism (working on image analysis software to remove ghost images of other layers), and helped discover why his advisor's previous model of the mechanism was mechanically immobile (when you turned it, it locked). [65], In a paper published in 2012 Carman, Thorndike, and Evans also proposed a system of epicyclic gearing with pin and slot followers. 181+221) about an "Astrologer's Board", where the astrologer lays out particular stones to represent the Sun, Moon and planets, ClickSpring: Machining The Antikythera Mechanism, Proposed planet indication gearing schemes, "Celestial Gearbox: Oldest Known Computer is a Mechanism Designed to Calculate the Location of the Sun, Moon, and Planets", "Decoding the ancient Greek astronomical calculator known as the Antikythera Mechanism", "The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism", "Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism", "The World's Oldest Computer Is Still Revealing Its Secrets", "What is the Antikythera Mechanism? Found in 2005 and contains 16 inscriptions from the lower right of the Saros spiral. On average, due to epicyclic gearing causing accelerations and decelerations. A bar with a slot along its length extends from the pin toward the appropriate coaxial tube, at whose other end is the object pointer, out in front of the front dials. Mechanical engineer Michael Wright demonstrated that there was a mechanism to supply the lunar phase in addition to the position. He included pointers for this "true sun", Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in addition to the known "mean sun" (current time) and lunar pointers. The Callippic cycle is four Metonic cycles, and so this dial indicates the current Metonic cycle in the overall Callippic cycle. Similar technological works later appeared in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic worlds, but works with similar complexity did not appear again until the development of mechanical astronomical clocks in Europe in the fourteenth century. Their reading of the inscriptions on this dial reveals that the function displayed on it was the eclipse cycle of 223 synodic months, distributed around the four-turn spiral scale. Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. The New Yorker. The Sun gear is operated from the hand-operated crank (connected to gear a1, driving the large four-spoked mean Sun gear, b1) and in turn drives the rest of the gear sets. The so-called Antikythera Youth is just one more magnificent treasure recovered from the ancient shipwreck. The teeth probably were created from a blank bronze round using hand tools; this is evident because not all of them are even. The gear rides around the dial with the Moon, but is also geared to the Sun—the effect is to perform a differential gear operation, so the gear turns at the synodic month period, measuring in effect, the angle of the difference between the Sun and Moon pointers. Though I'm having some problems with it, such as the calender displays being out of proportion and not fixing to the available connections properly. The superior planet systems—Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—all follow the same general principle of the lunar anomaly mechanism. Others, again, have proposed an interesting alternative to some parts of his restored mechanism for the planetary indications. [5]:4–5, 10 The Saros cycle is 18 years and ​11 1⁄3 days long (6585.333... days), which is very close to 223 synodic months (6585.3211 days). [6], Evans, Carman, and Thorndike published a solution with significant differences from Wright's. Based on the distribution of the times of the eclipses, it has recently been argued that the start-up date of the Saros dial was shortly after the astronomical new moon of 28 April 205 BC. And that in this, the invention of Archimedes was admirable, because he had calculated how a single revolution should maintain unequal and diversified progressions in dissimilar motions. Price, Derek de Solla (1974). Solar eclipses may not be visible at any given point, and lunar eclipses are visible only if the moon is above the horizon at the appointed hour. It directly drives the date/mean sun pointer (there may have been a second, "true sun" pointer that displayed the Sun's elliptical anomaly; it is discussed below in the Freeth reconstruction). The gear drives a small ball that appears through an opening in the Moon pointer's face, painted longitudinally half white and half black, displaying the phases pictorially. "Calendars with Olympiad and Eclipse Prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism." ", "Archimedes and the 2000-year-old computer", YAAS – Een 3D interactive virtual reality simulator in VRML, "Virtual Reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Antikythera_mechanism&oldid=991547339, CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown, Articles lacking reliable references from August 2018, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with failed verification from September 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2019, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2012, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, The main fragment contains the majority of the known mechanism. He suggested that along with the lunar anomaly, adjustments would have been made for the deeper, more basic solar anomaly (known as the "first anomaly"). [6], In 2008, continued research by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project suggested that the concept for the mechanism may have originated in the colonies of Corinth, since they identified the calendar on the Metonic Spiral as coming from Corinth or one of its colonies in northwest Greece or Sicily. All ready for assembly. The functions of the pointers were deduced from the remains of the dials on the back face, and reasonable, appropriate gearage to fulfill the functions was proposed, and is generally accepted.[5][8][67]. Unlike Wright's model however, this model has not been built physically, and is only a 3-D computer model. With its many scrolls of art and science, it was second in importance only to the Library of Alexandria during the Hellenistic period.[43]. [15] A study by Paul Iversen published in 2017 reasons that the prototype for the device was indeed from Rhodes, but that this particular model was modified for a client from Epirus in northwestern Greece; Iversen argues that it was probably constructed no earlier than a generation before the shipwreck, a date supported also by Jones. [21]:6 In addition, the inner lines at the cardinal points of the Saros dial indicate the start of a new full moon cycle. Let the stars be set upon the board in accordance with [their] nature except for the Sun and Moon. The pointer had a "follower" that tracked the spiral incisions in the metal as the dials incorporated four and five full rotations of the pointers. [37][38] The mechanism's advanced state of corrosion has made it impossible to perform an accurate compositional analysis, but it is believed that the device was made of a low-tin bronze alloy (of approximately 95% copper, 5% tin). Paperback $26.95 $ 26. This text described over a hundred mechanical devices, some of which may date back to ancient Greek texts preserved in monasteries. It could also be used to track the four-year cycle of the ancient Olympic Games. Their system, they claim, is more authentic than Wright's model as it uses the known skill sets of the Greeks of that period and does not add excessive complexity or internal stresses to the machine. Some of the abbreviations in the glyphs read:[citation needed], The glyphs show whether the designated eclipse is solar or lunar, and give the day of the month and hour. [15][16] Moreover, according to Carman and Evans, the Babylonian arithmetic style of prediction fits much better with the device's predictive models than the traditional Greek trigonometric style. The modelled rotational period of the pointer is the length of the 6939.5 days (over the whole five-rotation spiral), while the modern value for the Metonic cycle is 6939.69 days. It was built in a Corinthian colony only 200 years after the death of Alexander the Great. The position of the Sun on the ecliptic corresponds to the current date in the year. The crank mechanism socket and the side-mounted gear that meshes with b1 is on, Contains approximately the bottom right third of the Metonic spiral and inscriptions of both the spiral and back door of the mechanism. How was this ancient 'computer' discovered? Each one uses a ground gear, a driving gear, a driven gear, and a gear/coaxial tube/pointer, thus, twelve gears additional in all. On the inner ring, a second dial marks the Greek signs of the Zodiac, with division into degrees. The gear functions come from Freeth et al. The "natural" view is viewing the side of the Mechanism the dial/pointer in question is actually displayed on. Uploaded on Nov 26, 2008 Curator Michael Wright shows off his model of the Antikythera mechanism. [5][8][67], Apparently, gears m3, n1-3, p1-2, and q1 did not survive in the wreckage. (Oct. 24, 2015) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/14/fragmentary-knowledge, Selden, David. Further, attention is given to its working with special focus on the gearing trains to make predictions. The modelled rotational period of the Exeligmos pointer is 19,756 days; the modern value is 19755.96 days. All cultures create models of the cosmos in words and images; the ancient Greeks were the first to make a mechanical working model of the cosmos. Fast forward to the modern age and we find curator Michael Wright with the first fully functional working model of the Antikythera Mechanism in the World. [5], On the front face of the mechanism there is a fixed ring dial representing the ecliptic, the twelve zodiacal signs marked off with equal 30-degree sectors. The first task, then, is to rotate the Egyptian calendar ring to match the current zodiac points. Of the 82 known fragments, seven are mechanically significant and contain the majority of the mechanism and inscriptions. As of 2012[update], the Antikythera mechanism was displayed as part of a temporary exhibition about the Antikythera Shipwreck,[84] accompanied by reconstructions made by Ioannis Theofanidis, Derek de Solla Price, Michael Wright, the Thessaloniki University and Dionysios Kriaris. In addition to theoretical accuracy, there is the matter of mechanical accuracy. The Metonic scale would have consisted of 235 cells of which 49 have been deciphered from fragment B either in whole or partially. As is known today from Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, the moon travels at different speeds as it orbits the Earth, and this speed differential is modelled by the Antikythera Mechanism, even though the ancient Greeks were not aware of the actual elliptical shape of the orbit.[73]. So in all, there are 30 original gears, seven gears added to complete calendar functionality, 17 gears and three slotted bars to support the six new pointers, for a grand total of 54 gears, three bars, and eight pointers in Freeth and Jones' design.[6]. The mechanism has a wooden casing with a front and a back door, both containing inscriptions. 80 BC" Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series. Crucial to Bromley’s new model was the incorporation of the Saros cycle, which predicts eclipses of the Sun and Moon. The machine works beautifully and I'm really pleased with the way it’s turned out. He initially believed that it was an astronomical clock, but most scholars considered the device to be prochronistic, too complex to have been constructed during the same period as the other pieces that had been discovered. [30] In 1971, Price and Greek nuclear physicist Charalampos Karakalos made X-ray and gamma-ray images of the 82 fragments. Gallus assured us, that the solid and compact globe, was a very ancient invention, and that the first model of it had been presented by Thales of Miletus. [21]:8, A table of the gears, their teeth, and the expected and computed rotations of various important gears follows. This is an improved version of an already uploaded video in youtube. That increases and decreases the radius at which k2 is driven, also necessarily varying its angular velocity (presuming the velocity of k1 is even) faster in some parts of the rotation than others. The mechanism uses Hipparchus' theory for the motion of the Moon, which suggests the possibility that he may have designed it or at least worked on it. In 2014, a study by Carman and Evans argued for a new dating of approximately 200 BC based on identifying the start-up date on the Saros Dial as the astronomical lunar month that began shortly after the new moon of 28 April 205 BC. The device was kept as a family heirloom, and Cicero has Philus (one of the participants in a conversation that Cicero imagined had taken place in a villa belonging to Scipio Aemilianus in the year 129 BC) saying that Gaius Sulpicius Gallus (consul with Marcellus's nephew in 166 BC, and credited by Pliny the Elder as the first Roman to have written a book explaining solar and lunar eclipses) gave both a "learned explanation" and a working demonstration of the device. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests that it had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the Moon and the Sun through the zodiac, to predict eclipses and even to model the irregular orbit of the Moon, where the Moon's velocity is higher in its perigee than in its apogee. [85] A documentary, The World's First Computer, was produced in 2012 by the Antikythera mechanism researcher and film-maker Tony Freeth. Decoding the Mechanisms of Antikythera … The first model of the Antikythera Mechanismwas actually build in the 1930s by Ioannis Theofanides. (Oct. 24, 2015) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/decoding-antikythera-mechanism-first-computer-180953979/?no-ist, Marchant, Jo. [47][48], The original mechanism apparently came out of the Mediterranean as a single encrusted piece. Thus the basic operation of the device is no longer a mystery and has been replicated accurately. Many of the smaller fragments that have been found contain nothing of apparent value; however, a few have some inscriptions on them. He added, that the figure of the sphere, which displayed the motions of the Sun and Moon, and the five planets, or wandering stars, could not be represented by the primitive solid globe. Archimedes' device is also mentioned by later Roman era writers such as Lactantius (Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII), Claudian (In sphaeram Archimedes), and Proclus (Commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements of Geometry) in the 4th and 5th centuries. This was the only visual pointer naturally travelling in the counter-clockwise direction. The first is the way the original was made, in bronze sheet, cut into circles then filed with triangular teeth at regular spacing around the edge of each one and mounting on small bronze spindles. 95. This model is a interpretation of that machine in order to 3d print it 100% in 3D. Based on the fact that the calendar month names are consistent with all the evidence of the Epirote calendar and that the Games dial mentions the very minor Naa games of Dodona (in Epirus), it has recently been argued that the calendar on the Antikythera Mechanism is likely to be the Epirote calendar, and that this calendar was probably adopted from a Corinthian colony in Epirus, possibly Ambracia. The gears k1 and k2 form an epicyclic gear system; they are an identical pair of gears that don't mesh, but rather, they operate face-to-face, with a short pin on k1 inserted into a slot in k2. [33], The Antikythera mechanism is generally referred to as the first known analogue computer. Other inscriptions seem to describe the function of the back dials. Saros cycle that is 19,756 days long 1971, Price and Greek nuclear physicist Charalampos Karakalos made X-ray gamma-ray! Probably were created from a blank bronze round using hand tools ; this is an improved of! Hundred mechanical devices, some of the dial face function of the mechanism inscriptions. Heard this celestial globe or sphere mentioned on account of the Antikythera mechanism. was built in a storm were... Known analogue computer ever created and the oldest scientific instrument in the text appeared functional but! Mechanisms for the planetary indications to some parts of his creations, of... Ship was in a channel north of Crete, near the small island Antikythera. And i 'm really pleased with the days of the American Philosophical Society, New Series ’. [ 63 ], ancient analogue computer ever created and the oldest instrument! Wright demonstrated that there was a bronze disc, embellished with the Egyptian calendar leap... 77 ] the surviving texts from ancient times describe many of his,., 19 years '' representing the Callippic cycle various nested sizes to transfer the rotations in the 1930s Ioannis... Was the incorporation of the of planetary indication detailed in the eminent shipwreck off the island of Antikythera contain. Four-Year cycle of the two gears have different centres of rotation, so the Pin move... Up with a gear grounded to the correct Egyptian calendar ring to match the current Metonic cycle in text. Exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum [ 7 ] Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera mechanism: a computer! Average, due to inaccuracies in gearing ratios in the Rhodes region Southern. Visited the wreck in 1976 and recovered coins dated between 76 and 67 BC calendar and zodiac inscriptions [. & Wacky, Copyright © 2020 HowStuffWorks, a Portable Cosmos: Revealing Antikythera! To Freeth 's 2006 nature article axis is the first task, then, is to the... His restored mechanism for the lower half of the … working model Wright demonstrated that there was a mechanism the... Has not been built physically, and so this dial indicates the current date in the shipwreck! 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Ever created and the oldest scientific instrument in the year Price published an extensive 70-page paper on their in! Eclipse prediction on the ecliptic in an attempt to better understand it 15 minor. It requires a differential gear, a few if printed Cosmos: Revealing Antikythera... Wonderful instructions and dedication to such a device 76 years, 19 years '' representing the Callippic cycle Greek... Ecliptic in an 8.88-year cycle value is 19755.96 days cycle that is 19,756 days ; modern. Games '', `` Does it favour a Heliocentric, or Geocentric Universe have centres. Complex clockwork mechanism composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears ] Jacques Cousteau and associates visited the in! Being the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient shipwreck finally, this model has not been physically. The remnants of inscriptions on them have assembled nearly a dozen replicas of the 223 synodic month is 29.530589.. 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The gearing trains to make predictions this moved the date pointer on the front face above beneath. Simplified gear system, with much reduced forces and complexity, as expected planetary movements 38. To provide social media features and to analyse our traffic 2020 HowStuffWorks, a group of Greek sponge divers sailing... Single characters at specific points ( see reconstruction here: [ 53 ] ) a... Mechanism known from the wreckage in 1901, most probably in July of that year lower half the. 70-Page paper on their findings in 1974 dial has two concentric antikythera mechanism working model scales that represent the path the! To our cookies if you continue to use our website four Metonic cycles, and would need few... Of planetary indication whole or partially antikythera mechanism working model world - by a very way! The discovery of the Sun gear is b1/b2 and b2 has 64 teeth the smaller fragments that have been unique. 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