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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. This week we are putting out our

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Speaker 1: unearthed episodes for the first quarter, and to wet everyone's appetites,

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Speaker 1: we thought that we would replay an episode that is

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Speaker 1: related to one of the things we're going to talk about.

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Speaker 1: That's the Anti kids are a mechanism which we first

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Speaker 1: covered on the show on July. So enjoy. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. My name

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Speaker 1: is Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And depending

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Speaker 1: on your definition of a computer, the subject of today's

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Speaker 1: podcast could qualify as the oldest that we know of.

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Speaker 1: And this story has all the makings of a good thriller.

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Speaker 1: There's a shipwrack, there's a mysterious device that's kind of

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Speaker 1: out of place in time, and there's actually an ongoing

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Speaker 1: debate over the origin of it, who built it in

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Speaker 1: the first place, and it's been studied extensively, but even

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Speaker 1: so it still holds this sort of level of mystery

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Speaker 1: about it. Maybe Aliens is one of those things that

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Speaker 1: people like to say, yeah, but not very many serious

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Speaker 1: scholars go a long. Serious scholars do not generally blame

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Speaker 1: things on aliens. They have a couple of theories that are,

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Speaker 1: you know, hold some water, but it's still up for debate.

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Speaker 1: I mostly said that maybe aliens thing because it is

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Speaker 1: cool and weird enough. Yeah, it's odd. It's definitely an

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Speaker 1: oddity in the context of the time in which it

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Speaker 1: was made, at least as far as we know. So

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Speaker 1: what this thing is, how this whole story really starts.

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Speaker 1: It actually starts two thousand years ago, but where modern

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Speaker 1: historians picked it up was in nineteen hundred uh And

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Speaker 1: at that time, a shipwreck was discovered near the island

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Speaker 1: of Antikithera by a sponge diver and his crew. So

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Speaker 1: this is like off the coast of Greece, and the

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Speaker 1: ship that they discovered had been carrying an assortment of

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Speaker 1: luxury goods when it sank, so bronze and marble statues,

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Speaker 1: silver coins, glass warrier, jewelry, Rhodian vases, and several other things,

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Speaker 1: but all pretty much luxury goods. In with all those

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Speaker 1: other treasures, the divers brought up arrusted bronze mass. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen or two, while studying the artifacts, archaeologists Valerios States

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Speaker 1: identified what he thought was a corroded gear wheel. Further

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Speaker 1: examination revealed that there were dozens of individual broken pieces

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Speaker 1: in the mass and that they were part of some

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Speaker 1: sort of clockwork style mechanism. Along with all those other

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Speaker 1: pieces that were retrieved through the years, eighty one different

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Speaker 1: fragments have been identified as part of this mystery object,

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Speaker 1: and at the time of the findings analysis there in

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, it was dated to approximately one

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Speaker 1: fifty b C e That date has shifted a little

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Speaker 1: bit with additional analysis to being sometimes it's listed as

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Speaker 1: closer to one hundred BC, sometimes fifty b C e uh.

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Speaker 1: And in the nineteen seventies, famous diver and deep sea

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Speaker 1: explorer Jacques Cousteau found coins at that same site that

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Speaker 1: date the shipwrecked to around eighty five b C, although

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Speaker 1: it's believed that the device probably existed for as long

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Speaker 1: as two decades before the sinking, so depending on whose

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Speaker 1: analysis you look at, it somewhere between one fifty b

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Speaker 1: C and fifty b C, which is really a pretty

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Speaker 1: small timeframe when you consider how far back we're looking.

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Speaker 1: That's a pretty pinpointed narrow range. So for a long time,

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Speaker 1: no one really knew what this was for I mean,

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Speaker 1: it was just a pile of rusty, broken parts. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Some of them were rested together many so, you know,

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Speaker 1: not not really easy to determine what what it was

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Speaker 1: meant to do. It's believed to have possibly originated on

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Speaker 1: the Island of Roads, which has a historical reputation for

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Speaker 1: making automata and other mechanical artistry, as well as an

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Speaker 1: advanced knowledge of astronomy. In the context of the time

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Speaker 1: ship was believed to have been traveling, the dozens of

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Speaker 1: broken elements piece together would form dozens of dials that

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Speaker 1: interlocked and moved together in a fairly complex layered mechanism

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Speaker 1: in modern hands. The artifacts have had an interesting history

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Speaker 1: and they've continually challenged the people who have studied them.

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Speaker 1: So as early as the nineteen fifties, researchers and enthusiasts

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Speaker 1: were actually attempting to replicate the antikithera. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: they could tell that there were gears and cogs, and

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Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out what exactly it was for.

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Speaker 1: And some of them took the approach of well, let's

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Speaker 1: try to build a replica of it and they will

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Speaker 1: reveal what it's for. But there was always this gap

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Speaker 1: in the information of how the mechanism worked because so

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Speaker 1: many pieces were corroded together, uh, that there was never

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Speaker 1: really any big success along those lines. In nine two

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Speaker 1: scientists used X rays and gamma rays to further analyze

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Speaker 1: the fused but fragmented mechanism. Their names were doctor to

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Speaker 1: sell A. Price and doctor Kia Carlos. Their work brought

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Speaker 1: to light some of the complexity that the mechanism had. UH.

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Speaker 1: It really shed some light onto just how many pieces

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Speaker 1: and gears that were within this lump that they had

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Speaker 1: solidified and rested into. But even so it was hard

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Speaker 1: for them to make out individual pieces with any kind

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Speaker 1: of specificity. So doctor de Salo Price developed a model

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Speaker 1: of how he believed the mechanism worked, but it couldn't

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Speaker 1: account for all the pieces because the depth of the

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Speaker 1: arrangement of gears just wasn't clear from all of their

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Speaker 1: imaging work. There was also an Australian researcher named Alan

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Speaker 1: George Bromley who took more X rays and did a

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Speaker 1: little bit more analysis. But he really felt strongly that

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Speaker 1: new approaches to imaging we're gonna need to be developed

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Speaker 1: if they were ever going to truly gain an understanding

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Speaker 1: of this mechanisms workings. At this point, a former curator

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Speaker 1: at the Science Museum in London named Michael Wright developed

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Speaker 1: a specialized linear tomography machine that he was going to

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Speaker 1: use to capture more thorough images of the Antika through

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Speaker 1: mechanisms inner workings, and in linear tomography, X ray images

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Speaker 1: are collected while the X ray tube actually moves through

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Speaker 1: a range of positions, so you end up with a

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Speaker 1: series of exposure angles and it gives you a more

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Speaker 1: comprehensive data set for analysis of an object. And he

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Speaker 1: actually kind of built this on site where the anti

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Speaker 1: Kathro was kept because they had to kind of custom

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Speaker 1: build it to handle this one thing. You should also

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Speaker 1: remember his name. He has a long and heavy involvement

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Speaker 1: on research with the device. Yeah, he's a very famously

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Speaker 1: connected to the Antika thro So then they're they're continued

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Speaker 1: to be study throughout the late nine hundreds, and then

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Speaker 1: in two thousand five there were a batch of new

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Speaker 1: pieces found and this sort of catalyzed a consortium to

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Speaker 1: come together to try to finally form a conclusive analysis

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Speaker 1: of this device's workings in purpose. So along with Hewlett

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Speaker 1: Packard and x Tech, Systems. Cardiff University, the National and

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Speaker 1: Cappadestrian University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and

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Speaker 1: the National Archaeological Museum of Athens all joined forces to

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Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this mystery. They were like,

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Speaker 1: we're never going to eat figure this out on our own.

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Speaker 1: Let's all put our our resources and our minds together

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Speaker 1: and see what the heck this thing actually is. So

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Speaker 1: in September of two thousand five, Hewlett Packard was able

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Speaker 1: to take a series of reflectance imaging photos of the

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Speaker 1: pieces of the mechanism. So this is a process that

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Speaker 1: captures repeated images of a surface under different lighting can missions.

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Speaker 1: Then that reveals details that we might otherwise miss. The

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Speaker 1: machine was custom built to do all this imaging, and

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Speaker 1: it reportedly cost about half a million dollars to build UH.

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Speaker 1: Hewlett Packard actually still has many of the images of

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Speaker 1: the Antikythera UH in an interactive online gallery and it

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Speaker 1: is super duper cool. So you can actually look at

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Speaker 1: how the different lighting um affects the details that you

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Speaker 1: can see, and you can play with sliders and look

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Speaker 1: at it and see like what it would look like

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Speaker 1: non corroded metallic finish. Uh. And we'll link to that

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Speaker 1: in the show notes because it's very fun to play with.

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Speaker 1: But morning you're going down a rabbit hole, you could

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Speaker 1: lose an hour or two very easily. X Tech brought

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Speaker 1: a twelve ton micro focused computerized tomographer to the party

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Speaker 1: and it was able to complete internal composition models of

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Speaker 1: the pieces in really great detail. So in November of

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Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Athens actually hosted a conference dedicated

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Speaker 1: to the Antikythera entitle Decoding the antiki thro Mechanism Science

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Speaker 1: and Technology in Ancient Greece. And at this conference, the

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Speaker 1: detailed findings of that analytical consortium were revealed to the world,

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Speaker 1: and their analysis had identified that all of those cogs

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Speaker 1: and pieces and pointers and knobs were part of what

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Speaker 1: they were calling a fairly complex analog computer. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: this was kind of groundbreaking information because these were mechanisms

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Speaker 1: that were at a level of complexity that the historical

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Speaker 1: record has no equal to until like a thousand years later.

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Speaker 1: So it was a really extraordinarily complex mechanism, particularly in

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Speaker 1: the context of the time it was dated to. But

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Speaker 1: then comes to the question of but what does that

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Speaker 1: analog computer compute? Exactly, so then we get to make

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Speaker 1: a replica. Yeah. So remember Michael right from before, key

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Speaker 1: factors in really hugely at this point. In two thousand eight,

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Speaker 1: Michael Wright, who was working in his workshop and hammers myth,

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Speaker 1: completed this major labor of love that he had been

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Speaker 1: working on for years, and that is the replica of

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Speaker 1: the anti Cathera mechanism and it works beautifully, it really does.

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Speaker 1: He used brass rather than bronze for most of the project. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so he had been working on this with those teams

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Speaker 1: from like the seventies on through so decades of his

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Speaker 1: life that he had kind of dedicated to this h

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Speaker 1: And when you see it, it's sort of breathtaking. There

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Speaker 1: is a knob at the side of the mechanism and

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Speaker 1: when it's turned by a user, it sets in motion

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Speaker 1: the movement of multiple dials on this impressive little machine.

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Speaker 1: And inside there are more than thirty gear wheels. But

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Speaker 1: it's a really fine example of an intuitive user interface

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Speaker 1: because to use it, you don't see any of the

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Speaker 1: complex mechanisms on the inside. You just have to turn

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Speaker 1: this knob and seamlessly and smoothly, all of these different

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Speaker 1: dials turn and show you different information. Just as on

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Speaker 1: the original machine, all the gears inside the replica have

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Speaker 1: triangular teeth. Some of them have as few as fifteen teeth,

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Speaker 1: and others have as many as two hundred and twenty three.

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Speaker 1: Each piece on the original artifact would have been handcut

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Speaker 1: from a sheet of bronze. So the front of the

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Speaker 1: mechanism includes pointers that feature the Greek zodiac, the location

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Speaker 1: of the moon, and the five planets that the Greeks

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Speaker 1: knew about, So that's Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn,

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Speaker 1: and an Egyptian calendar. And this front dial is actually

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Speaker 1: two separate dials, one that sits within another, and the

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Speaker 1: inner ring includes the zodiac and the outer ring is

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Speaker 1: a three hundred and sixty five day calendar. And when

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Speaker 1: the knob is turned, the device predicts the motions of

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Speaker 1: the heavens. So when you select a date on the

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Speaker 1: calendar by turning the knob, the heavenly bodies on their

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Speaker 1: respective pointers will rotate into their expected positions in the

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Speaker 1: sky for that date. Just pretty awesome. I literally kind

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Speaker 1: of get chills just talking about it because it's mind blowing.

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Speaker 1: It's really astounding. There's more information even than that on

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Speaker 1: the back on two dials that are stacked one above

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Speaker 1: the other. The top dial displays a nineteen year, two

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Speaker 1: thirty five month calendar and it marks, among other things,

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Speaker 1: the scheduling of the Olympic Games, which is kind of

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Speaker 1: a cool little um function for it to have, uh,

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Speaker 1: And it features individual months that are marked out along

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Speaker 1: the exterior ring of the dial. The bottom dial shows

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Speaker 1: a solunar calendar of seventy six years, including a predictive

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Speaker 1: model of lunar and solar eclipses. And what's really sort

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Speaker 1: of interesting about this little analog computer is its size.

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Speaker 1: It's like the size of a shoe box. It's really

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Speaker 1: quite small. So when you think about all the things

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Speaker 1: it can do by turning one single knob, That's why

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Speaker 1: I said, it's kind of a beautifully simple user interface

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Speaker 1: considering that all of those moving parts inside are predicting

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Speaker 1: all of those things at the same time. Again, mind blowing.

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Speaker 1: I feel like gets a tiny shoe box version of

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Speaker 1: that massive planetarium thing kind of inside like Audred's house

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Speaker 1: in the Dark pistol. Uh. And that brings up the

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Speaker 1: question of just who made this amazing mechanism, not Gelflings

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Speaker 1: and the short answer to the question is almost that,

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Speaker 1: though we don't know it could have been Guelflings. Sure

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Speaker 1: not really there, but there is a longer answer. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The longer answer is because of the other relics on

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Speaker 1: board and the location of the shipwreck which held the device.

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Speaker 1: As we mentioned early on, historians have sort of considered

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Speaker 1: that it may have originated on roads, and there's additional

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Speaker 1: evidence to support that theory. The famed Greek astronomer Hipparchus

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Speaker 1: is believed to have worked on the island of Rhodes

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Speaker 1: from around b C until his death in one BC,

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Speaker 1: so for twenty years he was there uh and later Posidonius,

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Speaker 1: who was a philosopher and a follower of Hipparcis, actually

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Speaker 1: set up an astronomy school there at Rhodes. And the

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Speaker 1: writings of Cicero, the first century BC Roman lawyer and console,

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Speaker 1: a reference to the mechanism made by Poseidonius is made

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Speaker 1: quote which at each revolution produces the same motions of

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Speaker 1: the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets that take

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Speaker 1: place in the heavens every day and night. This has

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Speaker 1: of course led many to believe that the device is

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Speaker 1: the work of Posidonius or another Hipparcis follower, and supporting

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Speaker 1: this belief is the fact that, when uh imaging gave

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Speaker 1: us clearer views of the interior workings, the ratios of

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Speaker 1: two of the gear wheels within the device produce a

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Speaker 1: motion that very closely mimics the way Hipparcis described the

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Speaker 1: burying motion of the moon around the Earth, which had

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Speaker 1: not happened prior to him. I don't believe, but that's

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Speaker 1: not the only story that has um some weight behind

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Speaker 1: it in terms of potential origin. The month names inscribed

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Speaker 1: on the object were only used in certain parts of

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Speaker 1: northwestern Greece and Sicily. This calendar would have been used

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Speaker 1: in the Sicilian city of Syracuse, home to Archimedes. Since Archimedes,

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Speaker 1: who was a mathematician and astronomer, was known to have

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Speaker 1: built some astronomical models and mechanisms of his own, some

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Speaker 1: historians want to attribute the anti Catherat to him. However,

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Speaker 1: because Archimedes was killed at the Siege of Syracuse and

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Speaker 1: to twelve BC, that puts his death several decades before

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Speaker 1: the machine is believed to have been built. Some scholars

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Speaker 1: still feel that the machine could be part of a

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Speaker 1: tradition that perhaps descended from Archimedes and his work, but

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Speaker 1: the jury is still out the origin. There's no definitive

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Speaker 1: accepted origin story for it. But those are the two

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Speaker 1: pack leaders, and then of course the alien theorists, but

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Speaker 1: they don't really have any history to back that one up,

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Speaker 1: only a little. Uh. But then this all makes me ponder,

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Speaker 1: and I think many other people, so where does this bizarre,

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Speaker 1: wonderful thing fit into history? And why haven't we seen

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Speaker 1: more of these kinds of computing artifacts. And there is

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Speaker 1: a woman named Joe Marchant who has written a great

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Speaker 1: deal about um the the Antikythera, and she had even

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Speaker 1: wrote a book about it called The Coding the Heavens.

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Speaker 1: But in an article that she wrote for Nature, she

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Speaker 1: made the following quote that I really enjoyed, and it

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Speaker 1: was more surprising to an observer from the progress obsessed

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Speaker 1: twenty one century is the apparent lack of a subsequent

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Speaker 1: tradition based on the same technology of ever better clockwork

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Speaker 1: spreading out around the world. How can the capacity to

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Speaker 1: build the machine so magnificent have passed through history with

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Speaker 1: no is effects? So yeah, was this wondrous creation just

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Speaker 1: a one off of us an especially gifted engineer he

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Speaker 1: wanted to show off some extremely amazing skills or is

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Speaker 1: it really the only surviving piece of a part of history.

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Speaker 1: We've somehow not ever found other evidence of UH and

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Speaker 1: Michael Wright, who he referenced before, that is really quite

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Speaker 1: famous for making this beautiful replica. UH gave a quote

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Speaker 1: to the BBC in two thousand six where he said,

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Speaker 1: and he said it similarly in other interviews. The designer

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Speaker 1: and maker of the device knew what they wanted to achieve,

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Speaker 1: and they did it expertly. They made no mistakes to

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Speaker 1: do this. It can't have been very far from their

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Speaker 1: everyday stock work. And he I watched late in the

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Speaker 1: game after we had prepped all of our show notes

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Speaker 1: another interview with him, where he was saying, normally, if

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Speaker 1: you look at historical clockworks, you can almost see where

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Speaker 1: the plan was amended or the clockmaker kind of changed

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Speaker 1: his mind about how something was going to function. But

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Speaker 1: there are no such apparent changes in this. It really

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Speaker 1: is all put together beautifully with no It doesn't look

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Speaker 1: like there was ever any editing to the plan. So

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Speaker 1: most researchers agree with Right that this couldn't have been

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Speaker 1: a one of a kind object. One explanation for why

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Speaker 1: we haven't found anything else like this piece is that

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Speaker 1: it just survived almost entirely by blind Look. I mean

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Speaker 1: it is more than two thousand years old. Yes, so

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Speaker 1: long time for uh, you know, for for something to survive,

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Speaker 1: especially considering that bronze and other medals at the time

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Speaker 1: were really frequently melted down to make other objects. But

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Speaker 1: this sank to the bottom of the sea and it

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Speaker 1: remained relatively intact there. For context, the Athens Museum has

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Speaker 1: only ten major bronze statues from ancient Greece, nine of

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Speaker 1: which are from shipwrecks. Yeah, bronze really was so often

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Speaker 1: in high demand and short supply. So if it was

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Speaker 1: something that at wasn't needed any longer or had fallen

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Speaker 1: into disrepair, uh, which you know, these clockworks would presumably

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Speaker 1: have needed upkeep melt it down. Yeah, makes something new.

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Speaker 1: We need it for other things that I that might

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Speaker 1: be a tradition we should revive ourselves. Uh. While examples

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Speaker 1: of other mechanisms that model the movement of heavenly bodies

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Speaker 1: have been found that are closer to the time it's

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Speaker 1: believed that this existed, none of them are anywhere near

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Speaker 1: as detailed or sophisticated as the Antikythera. It's, as I

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Speaker 1: said earlier, not until the fourteenth century that even comparable

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Speaker 1: clockworks start to appear. The three largest fragments of this

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Speaker 1: mechanism are on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece,

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Speaker 1: and the smaller pieces of it are in storage at

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Speaker 1: the museum. Study of the Antikythera continues. I don't think

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Speaker 1: anybody believes the book is closed on this one. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There are still conferences and symposia that are held to

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Speaker 1: discuss its place in history, in its origin, and the

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Speaker 1: last one was quite recent. It was June of so

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Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago, really, uh, And it was

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Speaker 1: a workshop to bring the other classicists, astronomers, archaeologists, mathematicians

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Speaker 1: and historians and they all had the goal of discussing

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Speaker 1: science and innovation and antiquity around the theme of the

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Speaker 1: anti Kithro mechanism. So I'm hoping we get lots of

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Speaker 1: interesting papers to come out of that group, think uh.

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Speaker 1: And there's also continuing analysis of the inscriptions on the

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Speaker 1: mechanism in case there are any new revelations that people

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Speaker 1: haven't necessarily identified yet. And then in another fully functional

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Speaker 1: replica was built this time out of Lego. Naturally it

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Speaker 1: looks quite a bit different. Yeah, it's not a true replica, right,

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Speaker 1: but the function of each dial is faithfully duplicated using Lego.

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Speaker 1: And there's even a neat video that explains how the

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Speaker 1: mathematics of the gears work, how they combined to perform

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Speaker 1: the same functions as the brond artifact does, and we

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Speaker 1: will link to that in our show notes too. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a it's one of those things that I really

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Speaker 1: it really is breathtaking. There in several of the links

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Speaker 1: that will appear in our show notes, there is a

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Speaker 1: video that was done by I believe, the New Scientists,

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Speaker 1: and it's Michael right kind of giving a demonstration of

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Speaker 1: it and turning the crank and you can see all

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Speaker 1: the wheels move and how beautifully it's smooth as silk.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's no awkward chunking along. It's really really

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Speaker 1: it seems almost magical, which considering how many things that

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Speaker 1: are just much simpler you have to fiddle with, it's

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Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Yeah, it's it's really beautiful. Like the key

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Speaker 1: to my front door has to be jostled to work,

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Speaker 1: and exactly and this is a very complex machine, much

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Speaker 1: more difficult than the key to my front door, built

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Speaker 1: entirely replicating the specs of this two thousand year old object,

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Speaker 1: and it works perfectly and beautifully and is so smooth.

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Speaker 1: It's really quite as sound name the anti kids. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have like romantic attachment to it because it's so amazing.

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Speaker 1: I think that's valid. It's and I think I'm not

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Speaker 1: the only one. There are lots of people. Anytime you

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Speaker 1: see interviews with people that study it, they sort of

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Speaker 1: have that like giddy slash wistful combination where they're just

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Speaker 1: they're still blown away by it, even if they've been

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Speaker 1: working with it in the data sets for decades. It's

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Speaker 1: really quite cool. So that's the anti ki thro A mechanism.

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Speaker 1: Fay so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since

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Speaker 1: this episode is out of the archive, if you heard

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Speaker 1: an email address or Facebook U r L or something

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Speaker 1: similar over the course of the show that could be

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Speaker 1: obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at

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Speaker 1: I Heart radio dot com. Our old health stuff works

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Speaker 1: email address no longer works, and you can find us

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Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History, and you

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Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast

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Speaker 1: to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a

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Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I

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