Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and folks. My plan
Speaker 1: was to present part two of the Founding of General
Speaker 1: Motors for today. I was going to do a full
Speaker 1: episode about that, and I'm still working on it, but
Speaker 1: my neighborhood has been hit with some outages in internet service, uh,
Speaker 1: quite a few of them. Unfortunately. That has really impaired
Speaker 1: my ability to continue my research and dive in and
Speaker 1: be able to frame out that episode. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to leave you guys without an episode to listen to.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, I can't really record something
Speaker 1: new unless I'm just speaking off the cuff, and let's
Speaker 1: be honest, none of us want that. So instead and
Speaker 1: I thought I would bring to you a classic episode.
Speaker 1: This is actually called the Antikithera Update episode, but there's
Speaker 1: an update to the update that I will talk about
Speaker 1: once this episode plays through. This was a very special
Speaker 1: episode where Joe McCormick, who is now one of the
Speaker 1: co hosts of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, joined me
Speaker 1: for the show. And we talked about this remarkable device
Speaker 1: from the Greeks of old that was discovered in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century and what we had learned from it
Speaker 1: up to that point. But as you will hear when
Speaker 1: we get to the end, we've learned a little bit more.
Speaker 1: So let's listen to this classic episode and I'll chat
Speaker 1: with you some more at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: On forward thinking, we usually talk about the future or
Speaker 1: another and um, so I wanted to go in completely
Speaker 1: the opposite direction and talk about the technology of the past.
Speaker 1: And I started thinking, I wonder, what's the oldest computer
Speaker 1: that we know about? Oh, I got you. So we're
Speaker 1: talking nineteen forty six with ani AC, right, that computer
Speaker 1: that you would end up programming with lots of plugs
Speaker 1: and switches, not at all? Wow? No, so wait are you?
Speaker 1: You're saying it's older than that? Older? Okay, al right,
Speaker 1: well find how about the ninety two that's the TENNAS
Speaker 1: soft Berry computer or ABC, which was built at Iowa
Speaker 1: State College which is now university. Obviously, but there was
Speaker 1: there was a patent dispute actually that was decided in
Speaker 1: the United States government about whether any AC or the
Speaker 1: ABC computer were first and ultimately they said that it uh,
Speaker 1: you could not have anyone to claim they were the
Speaker 1: ones to invent the computer. That's the first one, right,
Speaker 1: ABC computer. Okay, alright, N one. We're starting to get
Speaker 1: a little fuzzy here, but all right, So Conrad Zeus
Speaker 1: builds the Z three computer. And that was also the
Speaker 1: same year when the first bomba was built, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the devices meant to help decrypt German messages.
Speaker 1: That's it, right, all right? Ninety nine George Stimmitts completes
Speaker 1: the complex number calculator, the c n C at Bell
Speaker 1: Telephone Laboratories. We just finished talking about Bell Labs. This
Speaker 1: has got to be it. And even in the first
Speaker 1: demonstration he used teletype so that he could program this
Speaker 1: remotely over special telephone line, so it was the first
Speaker 1: remote computer as well. So that's it, right, I think
Speaker 1: you need to think less electricity fine, fine eighty seven
Speaker 1: the Analytical Engine. Charles Babbage, he designs this, never finishes
Speaker 1: it in his lifetime, but of course that is the
Speaker 1: device that Ada Lovelace, the Enchantress of Numbers, had possibly
Speaker 1: even created computer programs for algorithms where she envisioned a
Speaker 1: time where you could encode things like music and poetry
Speaker 1: into mathematics. That's it, the analytical engine. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that. You're you're about two years off
Speaker 1: to say what not about? Almost? Okay, so what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? I'm talking about something that is called
Speaker 1: the antique antique antique. Oh, we're gonna have this problem
Speaker 1: the whole time, the anti cithera mess Yes, the anti
Speaker 1: cithera mechanism or also known as the antikathera mechanism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all depends on the r which pronunciation you follow.
Speaker 1: Anti Cithera seems to be fairly commonplace. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and use that one and probably switch off
Speaker 1: without even thinking about it. All right, I know a
Speaker 1: little bit about this, but I guess before we talk
Speaker 1: about this mechanism, maybe we need to say what the
Speaker 1: heck is anti Cithera. For anyone who is not familiar
Speaker 1: with the the geography of Greece, you may not know
Speaker 1: this is. This refers to a place. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: island in the Mediterranean Sea. And if you um, if
Speaker 1: you imagine you're looking at the Mediterranean, it's the small
Speaker 1: island that's between Crete to the south and the Peloponnesian
Speaker 1: Peninsula up to the north, so the mainland of Greece,
Speaker 1: and it's right there in the middle. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: bigger island just called Kythera, and this is a smaller
Speaker 1: one offset from it called Antikythera. So if Antikithera and
Speaker 1: Kithera were to collide, it would just destroy one another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: total positronic reversilation. Yeah, you know, tell them about the twinkie. So,
Speaker 1: you know, joking aside, Does that mean that this is
Speaker 1: where that mechanism was made? Um? No, probably not. This
Speaker 1: is where the mechanism was discovered. How it got its name? Gotcha?
Speaker 1: So someone was walking around Antikithera one day and they
Speaker 1: stubbed their toe and oh, what's this and found the
Speaker 1: world's oldest computer. No, it's much creepier. Um, okay, So
Speaker 1: the story goes like this. Around the year nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: there was a group of sponge divers who were off
Speaker 1: the coast of Anti Cithera and they were doing their
Speaker 1: diving and guess whatever sponge divers do, they were gathering sponges,
Speaker 1: gathering sponges to wash all their dishes exactly. Um, So
Speaker 1: they were doing their thing but apparently one of the
Speaker 1: divers came up to the surface and he was like, guys,
Speaker 1: there are dead women lying all over the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. There's a bunch of naked dead ladies at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean. Yeah, sounds creepy, but SATs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually what he was seeing were statues. There were bronze
Speaker 1: and marble statues that were part of the payload of
Speaker 1: a almost well I guess about exactly to two year
Speaker 1: old ship wreck of a ship that was a Roman ship,
Speaker 1: a large Roman ship carrying a lot of cargo, much
Speaker 1: of it probably stolen or looted cargo. Right, we're talking
Speaker 1: at an era just around the time when the Romans
Speaker 1: were beginning to uh, let's say, incorporate the Hellenistic societies
Speaker 1: into their empire. Of course, So it had all these
Speaker 1: Greek artifacts on it, yeah, and the luxury items, like
Speaker 1: really expensive stuff in the Greek world. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: the idea is, we don't know exactly what the ship
Speaker 1: was doing. We think it was probably a ship that
Speaker 1: was returning to Rome from some destination uh in the
Speaker 1: Greek world. And so there are a lot of these
Speaker 1: Greek artifacts, including currency. Uh. They had like you said, statues,
Speaker 1: they had lots of pottery, um, and they had this
Speaker 1: this device, which was well, at first, it was just
Speaker 1: a lump, right, yeah, right, yeah, first, Well, and of
Speaker 1: course it didn't get that much attention early on because
Speaker 1: there was so much other stuff down there in that shipwreck. Right,
Speaker 1: So the people who went into really investigate the shipwreck
Speaker 1: and take a look and see what was going on,
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily realize that there was something truly special,
Speaker 1: something that was beyond just uh special from an artistic
Speaker 1: merit point of view, but could tell us a lot
Speaker 1: about how much the ancient Greeks knew about craftsmanship, about astronomy,
Speaker 1: about math, all of these things we've become apparent, but
Speaker 1: only a hundred years later, right after the explorer. So
Speaker 1: so it' it's it's forgotten for two thousand years essentially,
Speaker 1: and then for another hundred years we don't really know
Speaker 1: what it is. So it's kind of this lump of
Speaker 1: corroded bronze inside what what used to be a wooden
Speaker 1: box essentially disintegrated. Yeah, so there's like there's one big
Speaker 1: remaining lump, but they're about eighty two fragments in total. Right,
Speaker 1: So one of those fragments. The main fragment has the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the what we know of as the
Speaker 1: inner workings of whatever this device was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And we know a lot more about now, but don't
Speaker 1: want to ruin the surprise. No, But so basically we
Speaker 1: can say like what it was made of. So what
Speaker 1: they think now is, Okay, this looks like it was
Speaker 1: some kind of collection of bronze gears inside of a
Speaker 1: wooden casing. Yeah. In fact, at first they thought it
Speaker 1: might only be just one gear that somehow was loose
Speaker 1: from something else, and then they realized, no, there's actually
Speaker 1: several gears here, but it's all corroded together. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a fused into a big body
Speaker 1: of the ocean, snotball. Yeah exactly. That's very accurate. Um.
Speaker 1: But so if you can imagine, I would call like
Speaker 1: imagine a mid sized dictionary, not like a pocket dictionary,
Speaker 1: but also not that huge one from the library that
Speaker 1: you couldn't see it like a like a large hardback dictionary. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's got a wooden casing, so you could open
Speaker 1: that casing up and then inside you've got this corroded
Speaker 1: mass that uh, that is all this gear formation. Now,
Speaker 1: of course the wooden casing doesn't really remain except in
Speaker 1: rotted fragmentary form um. But that's the basic mechanism we're
Speaker 1: dealing with. And if you start to look at it,
Speaker 1: you would see this one big gear um, but you
Speaker 1: might wonder what does this thing do? Yeah, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: I mean, before we even get to that, like how
Speaker 1: old is this thing? Oh? Yeah, because I mean we
Speaker 1: we figured that the shipwreck happens sometime around eight five
Speaker 1: BC before common eras because mostly because of the dates
Speaker 1: that we found. And I say we, but the explorers
Speaker 1: found on the currency. Yeah, you know, sometimes Joe and
Speaker 1: I we get we get tired of working on stuff
Speaker 1: before thinking, we pop out to the Greek islands and
Speaker 1: then just go well skin diving, yeah, you know. And X,
Speaker 1: by the way, does mark the spot now, But we
Speaker 1: by dating things like the currency, they have sort of
Speaker 1: narrowed the ranged around five b C. But that that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that's how old the device is. No,
Speaker 1: they think that the device is older than the wreck.
Speaker 1: It wasn't built like right before that. It's generally dated
Speaker 1: between a hundred and a hundred and fifty b C.
Speaker 1: So it's thought of as a second century BC device, right,
Speaker 1: So so it is an ancient device. Uh, that seems
Speaker 1: to be about how old it is. Uh, we've got
Speaker 1: some ideas of where it may have come from. There
Speaker 1: were some No, we don't we don't have any The
Speaker 1: instruction manual for this device was not anywhere to be ound.
Speaker 1: It was not on the glove compartment of this shipwreck.
Speaker 1: So we can't be absolutely certain. Uh. There's some speculation
Speaker 1: that maybe it was the island of Rhodes, which was
Speaker 1: known for its scholarship and also it's craftsmanship. But there
Speaker 1: are some other options as well that we can talk about.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, Um, you know, we've talked about what
Speaker 1: was made of, we talked about how old it was,
Speaker 1: but yeah, what what did this thing do? And at
Speaker 1: first it was a real mystery. In fact, for like
Speaker 1: we said, like a century, it was a mystery. We
Speaker 1: just didn't have enough information to be able to determine that.
Speaker 1: We had some wild guests. There were people who made
Speaker 1: some good guess but they didn't know the full extent yet. Um,
Speaker 1: and that they didn't realize initially how awesome this thing was.
Speaker 1: You know, we can make an argument that this is
Speaker 1: the oldest computer, which obviously means that it has to
Speaker 1: do more than just have some inner work, inner working
Speaker 1: gears that move smoothly. It has to do something beyond that,
Speaker 1: because otherwise anything that was reliant on gears and clockwork
Speaker 1: you could call a computer her. But we'll get into
Speaker 1: exactly what it is that this thing did. That kind
Speaker 1: of makes us consider it more of a computer device
Speaker 1: and analog computer than some sort of interesting clockwork. Right. So, um,
Speaker 1: but in general, what we understand it to have been
Speaker 1: able to do, and in fact, we understand a lot
Speaker 1: more about it in very recent years than we had
Speaker 1: for the century leading up to it. Oh well, I'd say,
Speaker 1: now we've basically had a slam dunk in this one.
Speaker 1: Recent recent revelations have shown us, Oh, this is pretty
Speaker 1: much exactly what it is. Yeah, which is phenomenal when
Speaker 1: you think of how badly and repair this thing was.
Speaker 1: But but ultimately what it does is it's it's a
Speaker 1: device that not only tracks celestial events and the movement
Speaker 1: of celestial bodies in relation to our perspective here on Earth,
Speaker 1: it also predicts them. So in other words, you not
Speaker 1: only can you uh, can you keep track of what's
Speaker 1: going on, and it could give you an indication of
Speaker 1: where you would need to look in the sky if
Speaker 1: you wanted to see something like Mars. It also would
Speaker 1: tell you that, oh, on this particular date, you will
Speaker 1: have a full solar eclipse. It's kind of cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In other words, an astronomical calculatory UM. And so what
Speaker 1: it would do is it would have a position of
Speaker 1: the Earth and then um by moving the hand crank,
Speaker 1: which which no longer exists, but that's that's we figure.
Speaker 1: It was a hand crank that that provided the the
Speaker 1: kinetic energy to make everything turn. But by moving that
Speaker 1: you could see at the same time, based on a
Speaker 1: projected date in the future, the positions of the Sun,
Speaker 1: of the Moon, um. Probably of the planets we don't
Speaker 1: know the planet gears are missing right now, probably at
Speaker 1: least the plants that the Greeks knew about, which included
Speaker 1: the probably not the planets that probably not the we
Speaker 1: don't think well, not Neptune, Uranus or or if you
Speaker 1: want to be kind, Pluto. They they had identified as
Speaker 1: far out as Saturn. Now, if in fact we were
Speaker 1: to find evidence that it included these other planets as well,
Speaker 1: that as far as we know, they didn't know about.
Speaker 1: Then that would make the third part of our conversation
Speaker 1: to get a little more interesting. It also had yeah,
Speaker 1: as you said, an eclipse prediction dial uh and that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Uh. And it also predicted cultural events, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, like the Olympiad, right, because you had a
Speaker 1: schedule of when that would take place, and so by
Speaker 1: plotting it against this device and actually inscribing it on
Speaker 1: the device, you could in a factor then you could
Speaker 1: see what the what the celestial events were going to
Speaker 1: be at a planned future event that way, which is
Speaker 1: kind of handy. Um. But we'll talk specifically. We need
Speaker 1: to really get into the nitty gritty of how this
Speaker 1: is possible, and then we'll conclude at the end talking
Speaker 1: about how we know all of this stuff, because, as
Speaker 1: you're gonna learn, it's really complicated figure out how a
Speaker 1: device works if you can't actually visualize all the gears
Speaker 1: when you first get hold of it. Joe and I
Speaker 1: will have more to say about the Antikithera mechanism in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, so let's talk about how this
Speaker 1: device actually tracked celestial events. Okay, so we we know
Speaker 1: they're all these gears. There's a hand cranky turn. It
Speaker 1: moves things forwards that you can look at what the
Speaker 1: celestial conditions are on any given date, or you can
Speaker 1: even advance it so that you can look for a
Speaker 1: specific celestial event. Let's say you're looking specifically for when
Speaker 1: is the next eclipse going to occur? So you're not
Speaker 1: looking to see what the celestial scott what the sky
Speaker 1: is going to look like, um, three months from now,
Speaker 1: you just want to know when the next eclipse is.
Speaker 1: You could advance the handle from your date and keep
Speaker 1: doing it until you saw the eclipse information come up,
Speaker 1: and then compare that see what the date is on
Speaker 1: the other part of the indicator. We'll talk about all
Speaker 1: the different dials to be indicated by a dial, so
Speaker 1: it's like it's like an analog clock face. You would
Speaker 1: be spinning around a point to let you know when
Speaker 1: this is coming exactly, and then you could say, oh,
Speaker 1: all right, so the next eclipse is in you know,
Speaker 1: you know, three months and two weeks from now or whatever,
Speaker 1: and uh So there's a lot of different ways you
Speaker 1: could use this. Well, um, there were about thirty thirty
Speaker 1: one gears that we know of, probably at least at
Speaker 1: least more or at least thirty probably more, though it's
Speaker 1: I think hypothesized that there were more to deal with
Speaker 1: the movement of the planets that that's just lost. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a surprise because again, like I said,
Speaker 1: when we call it bad repair, I mean you're you
Speaker 1: think about this. This is like essentially the imagine a
Speaker 1: clock that's been fused into one piece. I mean an
Speaker 1: old style gear clock fused into one piece. That's kind
Speaker 1: of and it's it's opaque, so you can't see these
Speaker 1: gears that are on the inside just with the naked eye.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into how we figured more about this
Speaker 1: in a little bit. But so you had all these
Speaker 1: different dials that would mark different of sense uh and
Speaker 1: different time spans. Right, So you would have a dial
Speaker 1: that would be set up for for just regular keeping
Speaker 1: of of a calendar year, but there were also dials
Speaker 1: that were more attuned to specific celestial cycles. So for example,
Speaker 1: there might be a nineteen year cycle that's represented by
Speaker 1: one dial. Another one had I think a seventy five
Speaker 1: year dial, And these dials were to refer to things
Speaker 1: that patterns that would repeat once you hit those time frames,
Speaker 1: so like every nineteen years, this one set of pattern
Speaker 1: would repeat itself. So that's why they have these different
Speaker 1: dials to indicate exactly what's happening at exactly what time. Uh.
Speaker 1: What I loved was the idea that there was one
Speaker 1: gear specifically devoted to showing the phase of the moon,
Speaker 1: So not only would you see the position of the
Speaker 1: moon on any given date, but you would also see
Speaker 1: what phase it was in, whether it was waxing or waning,
Speaker 1: a new moon, full moon, what ever. And and uh,
Speaker 1: I really thought that was very clever. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: essentially either either refer to the dates and look at
Speaker 1: the celestial events to compare the two, or you would
Speaker 1: said it so that you would look at a specific
Speaker 1: configuration of the celestial body and then look at what
Speaker 1: date corresponded to it. It's um kind of amazing to
Speaker 1: imagine the complex planning and craftsmanship that went into a
Speaker 1: machine like this, because, um, when you start thinking about it, Okay,
Speaker 1: say somebody set you down and told you to try
Speaker 1: to build something like this, and you had you know
Speaker 1: it was open book test, you knew what time frame
Speaker 1: all these celestial events would occur in how would you
Speaker 1: do it? Yeah, I mean God, so you would hit
Speaker 1: some kind of figure out the relationships between the sizes
Speaker 1: of gears um and the way they would interlock to
Speaker 1: create fractional relationships between the movements of all the different
Speaker 1: bodies at the same time. And keep in mind that
Speaker 1: if this thing is reflecting, say, planets and stuff like that, well,
Speaker 1: from a geocentric point of view, the movement of the
Speaker 1: planets is not just a simple circle, right, I mean
Speaker 1: you see them, they persiss and then they go backwards,
Speaker 1: and the thing exactly so if you and there's a
Speaker 1: fellow named Michael T. Wright who built a replica of
Speaker 1: this device, and we'll talk more about him probably in
Speaker 1: a bit, but he there's a great video that demonstrates
Speaker 1: him using this machine to show the movement of these
Speaker 1: different elements and sometimes you see them moving kind of
Speaker 1: backward compared to other elements, and you think, wow, the
Speaker 1: gears have to account for that too. The gears have
Speaker 1: to be able to do very complex movements of these uh,
Speaker 1: these these arms that are on these dials in order
Speaker 1: to reflect what is really happening. And while the model
Speaker 1: itself uh does depict a geocentric view of celestial bodies.
Speaker 1: We can't be sure that the person who built it
Speaker 1: necessarily ascribed necessarily ascribed to a geocentric philosophy. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: certainly true because for the devices function, I mean it was,
Speaker 1: it was functionally geocentric, right, because we're perving from exactly
Speaker 1: even if the person who made it actually thought the
Speaker 1: Earth went around the Sun, it would still look the
Speaker 1: same pretty much, because if you're reflecting how the world,
Speaker 1: how the how the celestial you know, elements look compared
Speaker 1: to being on the Earth, it makes no sense to
Speaker 1: make it anything other than geocentric. So the heliocentric theories
Speaker 1: had been placed ahead of when we think this device
Speaker 1: was made. So it's possible we don't know, because there
Speaker 1: were still people who who ascribed to a geocentric worldview.
Speaker 1: I'd probably say that was dominant, Yeah, because because it
Speaker 1: was similar to what we would see centuries later, where
Speaker 1: to propose such a thing as a helos heliocentric review
Speaker 1: view would mean that you might suffer a little bit
Speaker 1: of let's say, you might get ostracized with extreme prejudice
Speaker 1: that people didn't like here in that Yeah, So anyway.
Speaker 1: You know, it does look like it was going to
Speaker 1: show you not only the Sun and Moon's movements, which
Speaker 1: is already complex enough because they don't move at the
Speaker 1: same you know rate, or you know they change positions,
Speaker 1: uh differently relative to one another. Then to throw in
Speaker 1: the other planets makes that or the plants that the
Speaker 1: Greeks knew about, makes it even more complex. So here's
Speaker 1: the question, does this count as a computer? I would
Speaker 1: say absolutely. I would say so too, And I've got
Speaker 1: a little argument here. Tell me what you think about
Speaker 1: so um, I'd say the basic definition of a computer.
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's included that it's electronic. But
Speaker 1: let's take that part out and say, well, whether or
Speaker 1: not it's electronic. Um, A computers like an interactive machine
Speaker 1: that can and these words often come up, store, retrieve,
Speaker 1: and process data. That's fair. Um. So it's like input,
Speaker 1: output and processing and storage. Yeah. I always think of
Speaker 1: it as something that can can take input, put it
Speaker 1: through some form of algorithm, meaning a set of rules,
Speaker 1: and then give you output on the other side. And
Speaker 1: it's predictable. It's going to do that the same way,
Speaker 1: like assuming that you put in the same input and
Speaker 1: you're running it through the same algorithm, you're always going
Speaker 1: to get the same output. Okay, so both definitions work
Speaker 1: very well together. Yeah, I'd say the biggest distinction is
Speaker 1: that today's computer as we think of as being general use.
Speaker 1: So you you have hardware that can compute, but you've
Speaker 1: also got software to boss the hardware around, so it
Speaker 1: can tell it to compute in different ways. Right, So
Speaker 1: in that way, you can have a single machine allow
Speaker 1: you to do Excel spreadsheets or play you know, the
Speaker 1: first person shooter game. Right, But obviously without electronics, this
Speaker 1: this ancient computer doesn't have software. It just has hardware.
Speaker 1: Or it's like thinking about a computer that can only
Speaker 1: run one program, which is not that difficult to imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you think of calculators as
Speaker 1: a subset of computers, calculators like your basic calculator. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about your super crazy calculators that have apps
Speaker 1: on them and everything, but your basic calculator does basic
Speaker 1: calculator functions. It's you know, again, taking that input, putting
Speaker 1: it through an algorithm, some sort of mathematical process, and
Speaker 1: you get an output similar to this device. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this device, it's like a computer that only has one job,
Speaker 1: but within that job, I think it's definitely worth saying
Speaker 1: it's a computer because its stores data. So the relationships
Speaker 1: between the astronomical pathways are represented by the mechanical math
Speaker 1: that's done between the teeth and the gears, so like
Speaker 1: the gear sizes themselves are sort of storing that data.
Speaker 1: Sure um, and then it takes input. You turn the
Speaker 1: hand crank to give it the input of the date
Speaker 1: you want to calculate, and then it gives you output
Speaker 1: it's got. The dials reflect the computed values of the
Speaker 1: of what you're looking for, and even as I have
Speaker 1: said before, you could do it the other way, where
Speaker 1: you keep turning the dial until you get the configuration
Speaker 1: you were interested in and then you look at the date.
Speaker 1: So it works in either sense, and uh, pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's when you think about how precise you
Speaker 1: have to be to make sure you get this, and
Speaker 1: not only that, but just the huge amount of information
Speaker 1: you have to have at your disposal to even start
Speaker 1: in the craftsmanship of this thing. Because the Greeks had
Speaker 1: a lot of information about astronomy, some of it they
Speaker 1: got from the Babylonians. So the Babylonians were known as
Speaker 1: very much interested in astronomy. The Greeks were as well,
Speaker 1: and so they had to have had all this observation
Speaker 1: data that they had, the things that they had observed
Speaker 1: about the movement of celestial objects in the sky and
Speaker 1: how those patterns would arise in order for them to
Speaker 1: plan that out into a mechanical device. And that, to
Speaker 1: me is really amazing because you're not talking about, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, every four weeks, this one event happens. Now,
Speaker 1: some of these cycles, like I said, are incredibly long.
Speaker 1: You had a nineteen year cycle, you had a seventy
Speaker 1: six year cycle, you had a fifty four year cycle.
Speaker 1: All of these were taken into account to explain the
Speaker 1: movement of celestial objects in various ways, whether it's a
Speaker 1: solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse, or that you get
Speaker 1: both a lunar and a solar eclipse within a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time, not to mention the movement of the
Speaker 1: other planets. That's a lot of information that you have
Speaker 1: to have compiled before you ever cut into a sheet
Speaker 1: of bronze. Uh. Yes, it certainly is. And and even
Speaker 1: harder is imagining how you would begin to compute that data. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean nobody. Um, well, actually this is a good question. Um,
Speaker 1: had anybody ever made anything like this before? Obviously we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, right, well, we don't have evidence
Speaker 1: this is the earliest existing device. In fact, we don't
Speaker 1: have any other devices to point to. H And let's
Speaker 1: be clear, when we're calling it the earliest known computer
Speaker 1: that that doesn't mean we think that there's nothing that
Speaker 1: like this that could have come before. It just means
Speaker 1: the it's the earliest one that we have, so and
Speaker 1: we don't have any others. It's not like there are
Speaker 1: you know, twenty other examples of this. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you want to look at for another object that's as
Speaker 1: complex as this one, you have to go about fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred years further into the early Renaissance and look at
Speaker 1: the Middle East, China, and Europe for devices that start
Speaker 1: to equal this level of complexity. However, these historians of
Speaker 1: mechanical engineering, they say this kind of stuff doesn't show
Speaker 1: up until late medieval clockwork. It's like, yeah, at the earliest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when you take that into account, you think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, is this is this an anomaly? Is it
Speaker 1: a one Offit some mad genius come up with us.
Speaker 1: But if you if you were to actually carefully examine
Speaker 1: those gears and we'll more about how people have done
Speaker 1: that over the last decade or so, if you were
Speaker 1: to very carefully examine them, you would see that they
Speaker 1: appear to have been made flawlessly, like there were no mistakes. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of experts have said that if
Speaker 1: you were to build, say a clock, and it's your
Speaker 1: first clock, it may be a functional clock, but if
Speaker 1: you were to look at the clockwork, you might see
Speaker 1: where there were mistakes that were made and then corrected
Speaker 1: for later on. There No, there's no evidence of that
Speaker 1: in this device, which suggests that whoever built it had
Speaker 1: done it at least a few times before to perfect
Speaker 1: the whole process before building another one. Yeah, and combined
Speaker 1: with the fact that this thing is just so smart
Speaker 1: that it suggests it was probably not the only one
Speaker 1: of its kind. It probably came from a line of
Speaker 1: similar devices, maybe of advancing complexity. And you might think, well,
Speaker 1: if this is the case where the heck is everything
Speaker 1: else and well, some of it could just be lost
Speaker 1: or destroyed. And also being made out of bronze means
Speaker 1: that it's a valuable resource which occasionally for other purposes,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, war, you would melt down so
Speaker 1: that you could use it for other stuff. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean think about we're talking about the first and second
Speaker 1: century b C. In the Hellenistic world. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's a time when stuff might have gotten grabbed and
Speaker 1: taken to another place, melted down, or just lost, just
Speaker 1: like just like this one was lost. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff going on if you look at h and
Speaker 1: we should mention this stuff you missed in history class.
Speaker 1: Another sister podcast they did an episode on this same topic.
Speaker 1: Fantastic episode, highly recommended. You should definitely go listen to it.
Speaker 1: Um But one of the things they pointed out was
Speaker 1: that if you look at bronze statues from that era,
Speaker 1: they're very very few of them, and I think like
Speaker 1: nine out of ten came from shipwrecks because the ones
Speaker 1: that were left on land, more frequently than not had
Speaker 1: been melted down for other purposes. So it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those There was not necessarily a sense of permanency
Speaker 1: in the time of the world. Okay, so we don't
Speaker 1: have like, in terms of archaeology, another device like this
Speaker 1: from the time, Has anybody ever described a device like
Speaker 1: this from the time. Uh, that's a good question. Do
Speaker 1: you have any actual information on that, because when I
Speaker 1: was looking forward, I was it seemed to me at
Speaker 1: the time that everyone was absolutely shocked by this device,
Speaker 1: because it didn't seem to have any kind of shock,
Speaker 1: shocked to the point where they were wondering if it
Speaker 1: was perhaps a hoax, that maybe someone had planted this
Speaker 1: thing and it was a fake. But it may be
Speaker 1: that there are sources I'm I'm aware of. Do you
Speaker 1: know any Well, I think there are ancient descriptions of
Speaker 1: ore ries. Okay, so those are wouldn't be exactly like this,
Speaker 1: but sort of ancient models of the movement of the
Speaker 1: Planet's interesting. So yeah, and of course we do know
Speaker 1: that there were philosophers who had described, uh, the very
Speaker 1: motions that this device enacted. That that you they were
Speaker 1: they were just describing it for scholarly purposes, and this
Speaker 1: device would show that in action if you were to
Speaker 1: move the handle. Well, here's an interesting question. Who built
Speaker 1: this thing? Yeah? Where did it come from? We don't
Speaker 1: We don't know, is the short answer. We have some suspicions. Uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes the name Archimedes gets thrown around there. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: one clue is just that Archimedes he was around, you know,
Speaker 1: a century before this, and he was a genius inventor
Speaker 1: and uh or at least we assume. So some of
Speaker 1: his inventions we cannot actually be certain were ever built.
Speaker 1: But sure, come on, he built a death ray, just
Speaker 1: just a death ray, okay, probably and a giant a
Speaker 1: giant arm that would upset besieging ships. I want to believe,
Speaker 1: I understand. Okay, So, uh, well, is that the only
Speaker 1: evidence that it might have been our Chimedes all No, Archimedes,
Speaker 1: as you might remember, was from he lived in Syracuse
Speaker 1: in the which is unfortunate. Yeah, well, unfortunate for our comedies.
Speaker 1: Uh he lived in Syracuse. And an interesting fact about
Speaker 1: the device that we discovered later is that, Okay, so
Speaker 1: the device has inscriptions all over it, very faint inscriptions,
Speaker 1: and they're hard to read because of all the corrosion
Speaker 1: from the thousands of years. But what they discovered was, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: actually we can make out some of these with some
Speaker 1: of this imaging we're about to talk about in the
Speaker 1: next section. And it's in coin a Greek. So that
Speaker 1: was sort of like coin a Greek was the lingua
Speaker 1: franca of the Hellenistic world. You know, people spoke it
Speaker 1: all over the place. But the calendar that was represented
Speaker 1: on here reflected the kind of calendar that would be
Speaker 1: used in the Ionian area, which would include Syracuse. Right,
Speaker 1: So that that gives at least some again circumstantial evidence
Speaker 1: that perhaps our comedies could have been involved in this.
Speaker 1: Then I again, our comedies probably died too early to
Speaker 1: have made this particular device due to an over zealous soldier.
Speaker 1: We know he died in hink to twelve BC and
Speaker 1: the device was made in the probably sometimes between. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that does put some he died too early to have
Speaker 1: personally made it, right, Maybe he made an earlier one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's one idea is that it could have come
Speaker 1: out of a sort of a Syracuse based school of
Speaker 1: our comedies maybe. And again, the Island of Rhodes is
Speaker 1: another example that people have have presented saying that they
Speaker 1: were very much on that island. There was a scholarly
Speaker 1: center that was devoted to astronomy, and that they also
Speaker 1: had craftsmen who worked in clockwork type devices. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that it could have originated from that area. We
Speaker 1: just we don't know. There's some clues there, but we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. Yeah. Another name I just want
Speaker 1: to mention real quick that gets brought up is Hipparcos.
Speaker 1: Hipparcos Hippocus of of Nicia. And he was a Greek
Speaker 1: astronomer um and geographer, and he did the maths. He
Speaker 1: was a smart guy trigonometry right, yeah, he he was
Speaker 1: also uh, he wasn't Hippocrates, but anyway, he he. He
Speaker 1: also was known for describing the movements of the sun
Speaker 1: in the moon right and uh. And some indications that
Speaker 1: it maybe could have had something to do with him,
Speaker 1: or that the astronomical theories that are reflected in this,
Speaker 1: including like the movement of the moon, reflects his thoughts
Speaker 1: about the movement. So it may not be that he
Speaker 1: had a direct hand in it, but that perhaps a
Speaker 1: student or someone familiar with his work took the theory
Speaker 1: and put it into a physical object. Okay, but I
Speaker 1: have another theory about who created it. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a feeling. I know what you're gonna say, but hit
Speaker 1: me with it, buddy. Okay, Well, it goes like this,
Speaker 1: this mechanism is way too advanced to have been built
Speaker 1: by human beings at the time. Obviously it was built
Speaker 1: by a aliens be time traveler see transdimensional reptilians. Right,
Speaker 1: so um or or sorry d um, like a super
Speaker 1: advanced secret human society that we don't know about, like Atlantis,
Speaker 1: but we do know about them, we don't think they exist,
Speaker 1: all right? So all right, And Joe, I know you're
Speaker 1: you're presenting this as an in tongue in cheek because
Speaker 1: you and I share a common opinion on this about
Speaker 1: how it's absolutely ridiculous nonsense to assume this. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: one thing, it it really it really says a lot
Speaker 1: about the cynicism of people when it comes to the
Speaker 1: creativity of human beings and ingenuity and our ability to
Speaker 1: process complex thoughts and bring them into reality, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same our men that no, the Pyramids,
Speaker 1: no human could have built those. Actually thousands of humans
Speaker 1: built those. Tens of thousands of humans built those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. It's not like somebody in ancient Greece building
Speaker 1: a warp drive, right, It's it's somebody who was building
Speaker 1: something that was totally available to someone with the technology
Speaker 1: of the time. All they had to be was really
Speaker 1: really smart, right, Yeah. They We know that the astronomical
Speaker 1: knowledge was there, you know, the scholarship was there. We
Speaker 1: know that the bronze working was there. We know that
Speaker 1: people there were craftsmen who generally it wasn't as good
Speaker 1: as this, right, but there were craftsmen who could create
Speaker 1: incredible works. A lot of bronze U Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of those even't survived because of again the fact that
Speaker 1: people would melt stuff down. But the ones that have
Speaker 1: survived have shown that there's you know, there has there
Speaker 1: was a level of artistry there. Yeah, it's I think
Speaker 1: the bottom line is it's quite exceptional for its time,
Speaker 1: but it's not unthinkable. And so we are discounting the
Speaker 1: uh the alien slash time travel or slash reptilian, so
Speaker 1: whatever I mean. If it was from aliens, you'd think that,
Speaker 1: you know, it would reflect a little more complete astronomical knowledge.
Speaker 1: You might be electronic or something. Also, it wouldn't be geocentric.
Speaker 1: Really talked about it, you know, it's functionally geocentric, even
Speaker 1: though the person who made it might have been right,
Speaker 1: But why would an alien bother to make something from
Speaker 1: Earth's perspective when oh, yeah, they could make an oory
Speaker 1: from the outside right, including the Earth revolving around the Sun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why would they do? Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me, not knowing about planets past Saturn.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they just thought those were those were
Speaker 1: not really high up on the list. Yeah, you don't wanna,
Speaker 1: you don't want to visit those. Yeah, So I think
Speaker 1: we can discount the whole alien hypothesis. So we've got
Speaker 1: more we want to talk about exactly. We want to
Speaker 1: we want to cover how it is that we actually
Speaker 1: know this stuff. But before we get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and thank our sponsor. So, like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, Trunk Club is our sponsor. I never
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Speaker 1: useful services. And like I said, they chip the trunk
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Speaker 1: Given an idea of what you like and the sort
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Speaker 1: and find clothing that fits you, that fits that look,
Speaker 1: send it to you. You can try it on, figure
Speaker 1: out what you want to keep, what you don't want
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Speaker 1: So go to www dot trunk club dot com and
Speaker 1: check that out. All right, So we have discussed what
Speaker 1: it was, we discussed how it worked. How do we
Speaker 1: know that it did this thing? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a giant hunk of corroded bronze. How
Speaker 1: could you possibly ever figure out what this thing actually did?
Speaker 1: As we already mentioned, people originally did not know. They
Speaker 1: had no idea what this hunk was capable of. For
Speaker 1: a century, we really didn't know. We had some people
Speaker 1: make some guesses occasionally, but for the most part, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until we were able to use something far more
Speaker 1: sophisticated than just our own eyeballs to look at it.
Speaker 1: We had to use X rays, and with the X rays. Initially,
Speaker 1: the X rays showed that there were lots of gears
Speaker 1: inside this hunk of corroded bronze, and that they were
Speaker 1: connected in some way. But those early X rays were
Speaker 1: not perfect. Mostly they due to the fact that you
Speaker 1: couldn't tell depth with it, so you couldn't see how
Speaker 1: the gears were connected. It was like a massive gears,
Speaker 1: but you weren't sure where where they were in relation
Speaker 1: to one another. Um. But enter something called three D
Speaker 1: X ray. Yeah, where you starized homography. Yeah you started, yes,
Speaker 1: scanning it from all different angles using different approaches. Did
Speaker 1: you did you come across the powerful X ray machines
Speaker 1: called blade Runner? I didn't. Yeah, yeah, so blade Runner
Speaker 1: X ray machines. A sorry. They used lots of different
Speaker 1: X ray machines throughout the study of this device. As
Speaker 1: we began to learn that this was far more important
Speaker 1: from a historical perspective than anyone had had thought leading
Speaker 1: up to this. I mean everyone was thinking that these
Speaker 1: other artifacts were really important and this other thing was
Speaker 1: a curiosity. But as we learned more about it, we realized, WHOA,
Speaker 1: this thing is amazing. Uh. Well, the the various X
Speaker 1: ray devices we use showed more of the relation of
Speaker 1: all these different gears, so we got to see how
Speaker 1: they were laid out inside this hunk of corroded bronze.
Speaker 1: But the blade Runner device, all right, So it was
Speaker 1: an X ray machine that was designed to look for
Speaker 1: tiny cracks in turbine blades. That's what the original design
Speaker 1: of these machines was for, and to tell whether or
Speaker 1: not you're replicant. Also to tell whether Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: ask you, if a turtle is on its back, what
Speaker 1: do you do? Why doesn't mechanism turn the turtle over? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So anyway, it would look for these tiny It was
Speaker 1: designed so that you could detect the tiniest of cracks
Speaker 1: and turbine blades, so that you could do maintenance before
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure. They used it to look at this device,
Speaker 1: the anti antikythera device. We keep avoiding saying it so
Speaker 1: that I don't fall over myself. Let's say it three
Speaker 1: times together, Jonathan, Okay, so that's fantastic, all right, Now
Speaker 1: you have to say it backwards. No, um, So the
Speaker 1: antikythera device, the blade Runner thing, it looks at it
Speaker 1: and it actually is able to see because it has
Speaker 1: such precise measurements. It's able to to to distinguish what
Speaker 1: the tiny shallow carvings are on those dials. That's how
Speaker 1: we were able to read the word inscription. The inscriptions, yeah,
Speaker 1: because some of them were just verry faded already, even
Speaker 1: before you talk about the corrosion effort in there or
Speaker 1: element in there, i should say, and the blade runner
Speaker 1: X rays were able to measure these very tiny changes
Speaker 1: in the surface of these different dials, and that's how
Speaker 1: we were able to see what the writing was and
Speaker 1: thus able to really um translated and figure out what
Speaker 1: this thing actually did. And that's how people once they
Speaker 1: started reading it, Once they started being able to read
Speaker 1: the writing, it became clear that this was a far
Speaker 1: more sophisticated device than what what predecessors were thinking. Even
Speaker 1: the earliest guesses were things that probably can predict solar
Speaker 1: and lunar movements, or maybe it's some form of calendar,
Speaker 1: but it no one was really aware of how sophisticated
Speaker 1: it was until we were able to take this closer look.
Speaker 1: And I think it's pretty phenomenal what we've learned about
Speaker 1: it so far, Like those shallow engravings have told us
Speaker 1: pretty much everything we need to know about its basic function,
Speaker 1: and that's how we're able to draw some conclusions and
Speaker 1: clear the conclusions that lad Michael t right to build
Speaker 1: his replica of the device to the point where he's
Speaker 1: got a working replica. Uh it as far as we
Speaker 1: can tell, it's as accurate to the original as we
Speaker 1: can possibly get. Yeah, you should look this up on
Speaker 1: YouTube and see it, because it's not just a model,
Speaker 1: it is a working replica. He built the machine. He
Speaker 1: used very similar methods as to what the ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: would have. He used the same sort of dimension of gears. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, keeping in mind that we don't he's working
Speaker 1: from an incomplete model. Even with our very very sophisticated
Speaker 1: techniques these days, you can't see what's not there, right,
Speaker 1: there's still some missing pieces that we don't really have.
Speaker 1: You know, he was able to recreate it based upon
Speaker 1: what we think the device was meant to do and
Speaker 1: his works and then the videos are amazing. When you
Speaker 1: watch the just the minute movements of each of these
Speaker 1: pieces in relation to one another and think of how
Speaker 1: complex this is, it's mind blowing. It's well, and it's
Speaker 1: also it's a it's a gorgeous device. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's a beautiful device. You would look at and
Speaker 1: you might think Originally, if you were just a glance
Speaker 1: at it, you might think it was either a really
Speaker 1: weird clock or maybe some sort of navigational equipment for
Speaker 1: like a ship or something, just because you've got bronze
Speaker 1: and wood there. But um, yeah, once you get a
Speaker 1: deeper understanding of what it is, it's pretty pretty nifty.
Speaker 1: I think the replica was made with brass instead of products.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it was brass instead
Speaker 1: of bronze. So yeah, even more ship like then with
Speaker 1: the brass and would combination. Yeah. Uh. There's recent scholarship
Speaker 1: going on with a project called the Anti Kit through
Speaker 1: a Mechanism research project that's a collaborative project between lots
Speaker 1: of different research organizations and individuals. Yeah, there's a mathematician
Speaker 1: named Tony Freethe and uh he's been using imaging technology
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of questions that remain about
Speaker 1: the mechanism. Yeah. They the group. The research group was
Speaker 1: founded in two thousand five and has been extremely active.
Speaker 1: They have sponsored several museum exhibitions throughout the world. I
Speaker 1: think right now as the record of this podcast. At
Speaker 1: least some of the device is on display in uh
Speaker 1: in a museum in Athens, but I believe that ends
Speaker 1: in January. Yeah, it's the it's an exhibition called the
Speaker 1: Antikittheras Shipwreck, the ship, the treasures and the mechanism, and
Speaker 1: it's at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. YEA.
Speaker 1: And so that of course has more than than the
Speaker 1: device itself. It also has examples of the other stuff
Speaker 1: that was found at shipwreck, which, by the way, people
Speaker 1: have gone back to that shipwreck and found more things
Speaker 1: around it since that initial discovery. UM, and so there's there.
Speaker 1: There's also been a lot of symposia that they've held.
Speaker 1: They've had a lot of gatherings where they they combine
Speaker 1: research and they published that research. There's lots of information
Speaker 1: on their website about the device and the circumstances around
Speaker 1: its discovery and just the process of discovery as we
Speaker 1: used more and more sophisticated techniques to examine it, and
Speaker 1: it's really a great resource. I highly recommend visiting that website.
Speaker 1: I'll link to that on our Facebook page and Twitter
Speaker 1: handle so you guys can see it. Because it's pretty
Speaker 1: neat stuff. I mean, it's um, you know, I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed reading about the process they went through as they
Speaker 1: would learn more and more, and of course that hasn't finished.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's there's one thing, one question besides who
Speaker 1: built it, that we don't know the answer to yet,
Speaker 1: which is why did they build it? Like? Why is it?
Speaker 1: Was it? What? What was the in purpose? Was it
Speaker 1: a scholarly tool? Was it so that they could uh create,
Speaker 1: you know, specifically plan out events to coincide with celestial events,
Speaker 1: so that perhaps it was a political tool. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe if if an eclipse is seen as a bad omen,
Speaker 1: you may want to avoid planning some big event around
Speaker 1: an eclipse just so that people don't think that the
Speaker 1: event itself is cursed. I mean, it's I'm sure in
Speaker 1: the ancient world you could probably get some amount of
Speaker 1: power just by being able to accurately predict eclipses. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's another possibility. It could just be religious power
Speaker 1: or political power. We don't know, And it's possible that
Speaker 1: as much as we can learn about this device, maybe
Speaker 1: we never really figure out with any degree of certainty
Speaker 1: who built it or why it was built. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'd be amazed if we ever are able to figure
Speaker 1: out who built it. That would be phenomenal to me.
Speaker 1: Unless someone's like, oh, look here there's an inscription on
Speaker 1: the bottom Johan from Sweden. What that would be a
Speaker 1: big upset, But not that I think that would ever happen.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it was want to float. Another possibility steampunks, right,
Speaker 1: so steampunk cost players. Yeah, but I'm thinking that it
Speaker 1: was a steampunk convention. A certain doctor showed up at
Speaker 1: it accidentally ended up grabbing this device, and on a
Speaker 1: further adventure, maybe three episodes down the line, ended up
Speaker 1: accidentally dunking it into the ocean off the coast degrease.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what happened. Um explains everything. Uh did you
Speaker 1: see the the lego? Really cool? Now? This wasn't We
Speaker 1: probably might not want to call it a replica because
Speaker 1: it's not trying to copy the form of the original,
Speaker 1: just the function, right, And even the function it was
Speaker 1: I think a limited part of it because it was
Speaker 1: really showing things like eclipses in the Uh, in the
Speaker 1: lego version, I don't think it necessarily showed all the
Speaker 1: movements that the antikithera device showed because I was when
Speaker 1: I watched the video is that this is really clever
Speaker 1: because it would show you the the date and uh
Speaker 1: when the next eclipse would occur, whether it was solar
Speaker 1: or Luna or both. But it didn't um both as
Speaker 1: in like the region of time when both would occur,
Speaker 1: not both occurring at the same time, UM necessarily. But
Speaker 1: the the it didn't tell you things. It didn't tell
Speaker 1: you things like the movement of the planets as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell. So it was it had a
Speaker 1: limited set of functions that the anti killer device actually did.
Speaker 1: But it was still really cool to watch. It was
Speaker 1: really cool. Let me tell you, I'm going to invent
Speaker 1: a device and it's gonna tell you it'll predict when
Speaker 1: the Sun passes in front of the moon. That will
Speaker 1: be a bad day. I'm gonna make sure I stay
Speaker 1: indoors that day. What is that called? That's called I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's called Well, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter because we're in it's essentially called boy, it's sure
Speaker 1: as vaporized outside today, isn't it. Yeah, I know that
Speaker 1: would not not go over. Well. We have a little
Speaker 1: bit more to say. In that classic episode of the
Speaker 1: Antikithera mechanism. But first, let's take another quick break. Now,
Speaker 1: when we recorded this episode, the belief was that the
Speaker 1: device dates from around one b C E. The researchers
Speaker 1: now believe that it's actually even older, dating from two
Speaker 1: oh five b c E. Now, the researchers came to
Speaker 1: this conclusion once they determined that the anti Cithera mechanism
Speaker 1: was time to begin with events starting in two oh
Speaker 1: five b C and not just the year. They figured
Speaker 1: out that the whole device worked best if we use
Speaker 1: May twelve, two oh five b c E as the
Speaker 1: starting date as the first full moon of May. By
Speaker 1: the way, now, the researchers Christianne C. Carmen and James
Speaker 1: Evans used a system that looked at different possible starting
Speaker 1: dates and they eliminated the ones that didn't seem to
Speaker 1: fit the mechanisms operation. The date of May twelve, two
Speaker 1: oh five b C was the one that was left up.
Speaker 1: So why is this new information so cool? Well, for
Speaker 1: one thing, it tells us that the person who designed
Speaker 1: the mechanism wasn't relying on Greek trigonometry, which didn't exist
Speaker 1: in two oh five b C. Instead, this brilliant inventor
Speaker 1: was using Babylonian arithmetic to determine the dates of various
Speaker 1: celestial events. Now it also puts the device's creation closer
Speaker 1: to the time of our comedes, who remember died into
Speaker 1: twelve BC. Now I felt all this information was really
Speaker 1: interesting and merited a revisit to our Antikythera device. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that classic episode. I told you I
Speaker 1: would have a little bit of an update, and I
Speaker 1: do so. Researchers at University College London's Anti Cithera research
Speaker 1: team have the well they believe that they have created
Speaker 1: a replica, computer simulation replica of the gear works of
Speaker 1: the anti Cithera mechanism. They studied the mechanism, the surviving
Speaker 1: parts thoroughly. They looked at what we believe it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to do, and then they kind
Speaker 1: of reverse engineered that to determine the sort of gears
Speaker 1: that would have been necessary in order to accomplish what
Speaker 1: this device was supposed to do, and that has resulted
Speaker 1: in this computer simulation model of it. It's really fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff and if they are correct with their hypotheses, it
Speaker 1: really points out not just how ingenious the engineers were
Speaker 1: to create such a thing, but obviously how accurate the
Speaker 1: observations had to be in order for this to even
Speaker 1: be a starting point in the first place, Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind the accuracy of those observations were also hinged upon
Speaker 1: the incorrect belief that the Earth was the center of
Speaker 1: the solar system. So that does that does change things
Speaker 1: a little bit, I would argue, But really a fascinating development.
Speaker 1: And if you're interested, you can go and seek out
Speaker 1: the reports from the University College London's and Tokithera research team.
Speaker 1: They have written about it extensively. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of pieces about the cosmos according to the ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: that really gives us some insight into the thought process
Speaker 1: at the time. So I highly recommend you check that out.
Speaker 1: I will have that second part of the General Motors
Speaker 1: founding up very soon. I apologize for its delay. If
Speaker 1: it had not been for some unfortunate internet outages in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, I would have had that up already. But
Speaker 1: such is the way of things. And uh, and while
Speaker 1: I know a lot of stuff, I do not magically
Speaker 1: have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that happened in the
Speaker 1: early nine hundreds with general motors. I just haven't filled
Speaker 1: out that part of my brain yet, but we're getting there.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for topics I should tackle
Speaker 1: in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me
Speaker 1: and let me know. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is over on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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