WEBVTT - How the Antikythera Mechanism Works 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:13.200 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:16.160 just Charles W. Chuck Bryant. So this is the stuff 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:23.279 you should know the podcast. Yes, indeed, Um, you know, 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.360 archaeology was the first word, first big word I could 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:32.600 spell early, because like two weeks old when you're spelling archaeology. Yeah, 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.600 I couldn't spell anything else for years and years, but 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:38.560 I could spell archaeology. I love archaeology. Yeah, me too. 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:42.120 It's one of my favorite things actually too, although I 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:43.960 didn't list that when I was asked what my favorite 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.279 things were in that one listener mail, and still it's 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:52.400 up there. Um, but you too, huh oh yeah, starting 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.200 with uh, well, starting with Indiana Jones. Yeah, that definitely 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.279 helps that that we were alive and at the right 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.760 age when those came out. Um, well, Chuck, there's a ship. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.160 It's an unnamed ship as far as I know, that 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.920 went down in the g and c off the coast 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:15.080 of a tiny, teeny little spit of land called Anti 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:18.679 Cathera in Greece, in between Crete and the Greek mainland, 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:22.240 I believe, and um in nineteen o one or nine 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.560 hundred it was discovered and it actually ended up giving 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.640 birth to the field of um marine archaeology. Actually it 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:34.000 was the first shipwreck that was ever excavated archaeologically. Yeah, 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:36.200 I think I wrote an article on that way back 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:41.880 in the day. Underwater archaeology. It's a very tricky, I 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.440 would imagine, so because most of the stuff you find 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.360 is falling apart, Like the second you take it out 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.559 of water, it starts falling apart. Right, So they've gotten 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:52.760 really good now and imagine they were not as good 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:55.840 about it in nineteen hundreds about bringing stuff up still 0:01:55.880 --> 0:02:00.280 in water, yeah, and transporting in water, same sea water, 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:03.080 display it in water to uh well know then they 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:10.320 start poking around in yeah, right water. Yeah, with the water. 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:15.240 It's pretty sensible. Um I could have come up with that, 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:21.120 I think with that method. Yeah, good for you. Um well, 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:25.920 So okay, anyway, this shipwreck that was discovered in discovered 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:30.200 actually by accident, right. Yeah. There was some sponge divers. 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.520 You know, sponge diving. It's a big deal. Apparently it 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:37.040 wasn't Greece. It was. That's where you had to get 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:41.240 sponges back in the day. Uh is in the ocean, 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.040 and they were the sponge divers who they actually got 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.800 blown off course by a bad storm and ended up 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.200 in that lovely part of town, and they said, boy, 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.680 this is great, let's just dive here. One guy dove down, 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:56.800 came back up and there. They weren't free diving at 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:58.799 this point, and actually had you can listen to her well, 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.239 it wasn't a diving bell, but underwater breathing apparatus is. 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.280 At this point. He came back and he's like, oh 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:10.359 my god, they're dead horses and dead men everywhere. Yeah, 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:12.560 and the boss is like, I don't know about that. 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.160 Let me go dive down there. He dives down and 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.359 comes up with a bronze hand and says, you big dummy. 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:20.679 They smacked the guy over the head with it. It's 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:24.680 a statue, a bunch of statues down there decomposing. And 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:26.400 then he went, wait, why are there a bunch of 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:31.240 statues down there? And they they said, well, let's figure out, 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.359 let's remember where the spot is and we'll just head 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:35.720 off to North Africa and do our sponge diving like 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:37.840 we were going to initially. Yeah, they still have to 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:39.920 make some dough, right, But when they came back, they 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.080 took the bronze arm and the location of the ship 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.920 to the Greek government. And the Greek government said, you 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:50.360 know what, this could be a big deal. We have 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.560 a lot of antiquities out there under the sea and 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:55.960 this might be some sort of treasure troups. So they 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.600 hired these sponge divers to go back and excavate this place, 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:02.520 and they found some pretty amazing stuff. In addition to 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.880 the bronze arm, they found all sorts of marble statues. Um. 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:11.600 They found a bronze statue of a young athlete. I 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:13.960 think it was like six ft tall, a little bigger 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:16.919 than life is what they call it. Um they found 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.720 a bust of a cynic, a philosopher, a very detailed 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.440 lifelike bust that's really neat. And um that was the 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.080 guy whose arm. That was his arm, Oh, it was 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:30.400 his arm. Okay. Um. And they found all manner of stuff, 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.240 some really cool stuff and brought it up and they 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.680 displayed it in the museum. And among this trove, um 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.680 there was a greatly overlooked item item number one five 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:45.320 zero eight seven. And um, it was this weird kind 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:47.839 of it looked almost like a kind of a clock 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.560 face in a wooden frame and no one knew what 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.120 it was, and compared to the amazing art that had 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:58.720 been brought up, it looked like a pile of garbage basically, 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.840 So they just piled it away um and it languished 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:07.360 for a while until it was um kind of rediscovered again. Yeah, 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:11.960 and giving credit where credit is due. The Sponge Team captain, 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.880 I think that's what they called themselves. He was captain, Yeah, 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:22.599 Sponge Team Captain, Demetrius Kantos. And then the cry baby 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:24.679 who dove down there and thought he saw dead people 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.680 was Elias Stadiatus. And if there's one thing I love, 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:34.839 it's Greek names. Love the names. Do you like those 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:39.920 as much as archaeology? Greek archaeologists that you're pretty much 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.360 flying in the upper atmosphere for me. Uh So those 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.479 were the dudes that led the Sponge team, and all 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.520 those antiquities, they're scattered about a little bit, but most 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.839 of them are in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.480 Uh and also some in Switzerland, oddly enough, and then 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.720 some more in a different museum of underwater antiquity in Greece. 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.640 And the reason the Greeks went to this trouble and 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:07.040 didn't just say whatever. Who cares about a bronze arm. 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:11.360 Apparently they'd been defeated recently by the Ottoman Turks within 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:14.240 the last few years, and we're looking for a way 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.960 to restore some national pride. And what better way to 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.880 restore national pride than raising two thousand year old statues 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.560 of your you know, ancient gods that were made by 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:29.480 your predecessors. And not only statues, but um, lamps and 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.119 bowls and utensils and tools and just all sorts of stuff. 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.760 It was a treasure trove. Yeah. So, um, this this 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:41.119 site still is basically intact. Um. It's a it's the 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:45.560 shipwreck is over Um a couple of I think about 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:47.960 three d foot span, about the length of a football field. 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.800 And there's actually for a long time they thought it 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:53.599 was two ships, but they think actually no, it was 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:57.960 an enormous, massive ship that broke into two and is 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:00.880 um they've only just found the front. They found like 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:03.320 the cabin, they haven't even found the hold. And that 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:05.840 it was a huge grain ship that had been converted 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.920 to basically a treasure ship that was taking Greek antiquities 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.960 to Rome around sixty b c. E um. And it's sunk. 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:17.760 So they there's all these treasures that they haven't even 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:21.440 found yet. They dove on it in nineteen hundred and one, 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.040 Jacques Cousteau hit it up in nineteen fifty and then 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:28.840 again in nineteen and now there's the most sophisticated dives 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:33.800 that are being taken on it. Yes, he's on it UM. 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.760 As of two thousand and fourteen, there's an international team 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.840 that includes some people from Woods Hole Geographic Institute or 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:46.360 Oceanographic Institute UM who are really starting to figure this out. Yeah, 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.240 and you know, one of the reasons you're still doing 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:50.200 this is because, like you said, it's just a great 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:53.119 find no matter what. But the other reason is because 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.920 item number one zero eight seven a k A. The 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:03.480 h how's that pronounced again? Annikathera anacathera mechanism is UM 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:07.040 one of the most mysterious finds ever because nobody knows 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:10.960 who made it. Uh and until recently no one knew 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.440 exactly what it was. But now they pretty much figured 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:15.600 it out. Yeah. Well, so when they when they first 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:19.960 brought it up in N one UM again, it just 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.400 looked like some weird kind of kind of like a clock, 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:25.720 but it was in a wooden frame as the wooden 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:30.280 frame was exposed to the air, it's it split and 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:33.880 the stuff inside fell apart. And when it fell apart, 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:38.160 one of the directors of the museum, I believe spirit 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:42.040 On Stais another great name. Um, he looked inside and 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.439 realized that these are all like actually different bronze parts, 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.880 and they have inscriptions and they appear to be geared 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:54.440 teeth like precision gears. Right, Except that's impossible because that 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:59.200 technology didn't come along for well over a thousand years later, yes, 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.640 a thousand plus, like maybe fourteen hundred, two thousand years later, right, 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:07.000 So it pops up in the west about the fourteenth 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.800 century in Europe. So yeah, like you say, it's totally 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:13.920 impossible that this could be what what he's looking at, 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.480 not fifty or a hundred years. So some people said, Um, 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:21.600 this thing probably accidentally was dropped over this wreck site 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.280 and just happened to nestle in and make it seem 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:27.439 like it was part of this ancient shipwreck. Nope, No, 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.640 it was found underneath other debris in the shipwreck. So 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.880 that's virtually impossible. But it was so confounding, and it's 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:40.439 so completely undermined our understanding at the time of technology 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.520 like that and just the understanding of that kind of 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:47.240 precision engineering. Um that it was just set aside, like 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.320 no one knows what this says. Let's just pretend it 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.240 doesn't exist. Yeah. Uh, and that happened until about the 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:55.640 nineteen fifties. And uh, we'll take a little break here 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.400 and we'll get back to what happened in the nineteen 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:17.080 fifties right after this. Alright, so it's nineteen fifties. Everyone's 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:21.400 drunk at lunch, smoking cigarette, throwing trash out of their window, right, 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:26.920 and there's an impossible machine rotting away in a museum 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.000 in Greece, that's right. And that's when a man named 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:33.400 Derek Dislo Price. Uh so, you know what, this thing 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.640 is pretty neat and I think I'm gonna make this 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.640 my new obsession. So he spent years researching this thing 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.280 and basically said, I think it's some sort of weird 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:48.160 Uh he said computer. He meant, well, he didn't mean computer, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:53.960 because it can't be a computer. Obviously it's not programmable now, 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.679 so it can't be a computer. But it's I mean 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:02.040 that words not terribly far off off. Yeah, it's not 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.679 a computer. So he's using the wrong word there. But 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:08.719 along with Dr c uh Man another great Greek name 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:13.120 Kara Kallos, he's a radiographer. He said, let's take some 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.520 X rays of this thing. In the nineteen seventy four 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.240 he published as Findings in Gears from the Greeks, which 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.560 he thought was gonna light the world on fire. But 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:27.200 it turns out people were a little scared, uh to say, Yeah, 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.920 this thing is predates these kind of precision gears by 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:33.480 well over a thousand years, So let's rethink everything we 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:37.280 know about this kind of technology. Everyone, No one wanted 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:39.240 to touch it with the tin footpole, is what I gathered. 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:42.640 It was kind of ignored the at the time. The 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:47.400 people who were studying ancient Greece were studying their written documents, right, 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.520 they weren't studying like artifacts, like physical relics or anything 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.839 like that, and they certainly weren't really up on the 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:59.880 ancient Greek technology technology. Um. And so yeah, he wrote 0:11:59.880 --> 0:12:02.760 this this book and just expected it to change the 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:05.480 world because he really had approached it from a very 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:09.600 scientific standpoint. When they finally released his book in the seventies, right, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:11.800 his theory on what it was was correct. Yeah, he 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.400 theorized that It was a I'm going to use the 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:20.920 word computer alright, a mechanism. It was a mechanism with 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:25.119 UM at one point up to seventy two different precise gears, 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:29.199 two gears that all interacted with one another to track 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:34.640 the movement of the celestial bodies, the five planets that 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:38.280 were visible to the naked eye, the Sun, the Moon, 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:43.800 It tracked eclipses solar and lunar um. And it also 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:49.360 um it tracked the Olympic Games just as an added bonus. Well, 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.679 if you're gonna have a astronomical calculator, you might as 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.080 well throw in a sports calendar. Yeah, you know, might 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:01.280 as well. Uh, and so the whole thing again, this 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.600 thing should not have existed, like it wasn't for another 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:10.920 four years before anything like this appeared in the West. Um. 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:13.280 So it shouldn't have been which was another reason why 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.200 a lot of people weren't like, yes, this is a 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:20.240 great book Gears from the Greeks. It changed everything. They 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.240 were like, you're totally full of it. And this poor guy, 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.960 Um Price was not helped at all by a guy 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.880 named Eric van Danikin right. Yeah, he wrote a book 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:35.120 in uh nineteen sixty eight called Chariots of the Gods, 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.760 and in that he proposed that, um, there are aliens 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:42.319 who have been bringing us technological gifts to Earth and 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.240 this is one of them. And everyone this was a 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.719 really popular book, so he got all the headlines with 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.600 just a completely fabricated story. Yeah, it was like it 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:55.800 was the birth of the interest in ufology and the 0:13:55.800 --> 0:14:01.280 Bermuda Triangle. The Naski lines are um landing strips, that 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.000 kind of stuff. Right, So when this guy came along 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:09.960 and put his stamp of um nuttiness, I guess if 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:14.960 certainly interesting. That whole Time Life Mysteries series definitely came 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.400 out of this von Dannikin's work kind of thing, but 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.400 it had nothing to do with any kind of academy 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.360 or scholarliness, right, so he really helped put the kai 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:29.960 bosh on Price's work. This gears from the Greeks, and 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:34.960 it languished for a while, um for another couple of decades, 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.840 I believe, right, Yeah, that's right. It wasn't until the 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:41.240 mid two thousand's that they decided, you know what, we 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:47.840 had this great technology now called CT scanning, computed UH tomography, 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:49.920 and what we can do with this stuff? We can 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.160 actually get inside this thing. And there are videos of 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.760 this actually being done on the mechanism. It's really cool looking. 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.400 You can like watch it unfold in real time. And 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.400 they basedly figured out from the inside out how this 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:06.720 thing worked and how it operated. And it is as follows. 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:11.840 There's a picture like a a wooden box about the 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:14.680 size of a shoe box. Right, Yeah, it looks bigger 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:16.640 to me, but I guess um I saw someone else 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.800 to describe it like a thick laptop size. Okay, again 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:23.360 with the computers, people just can't stop. It's the computer, 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.280 an ancient computer. On one side of the box, if 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.840 if it's standing like a shoe box on end. On 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.840 one side, there's a crank like just a small dial 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.200 with a little handle they would used to crank this 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.480 thing up. The handles missing. Now, by the way, this 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.560 is what you're describing is what it looked like originally. Right. 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:46.040 Oh yeah, Now it's just disintegrated blobs and chunks of things. Yeah. 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:48.640 So the knob on the side is what wound it 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:53.120 forward and backward. And uh, then you had a big 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:57.000 front side and a backside. All the gears are in 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.680 the middle contained their end. Yes, and again these are 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:05.080 gears with teeth between fifteen and twenty three of them 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:07.960 on a gear, and all of them. The number of 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.560 teeth that they have has to do with their relationship 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.240 to the other gears they interact with, that's right. So 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:15.240 they have all these different hands. If you wound it up, 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.680 it would engage these gears. Uh. Each of the hands 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:21.840 moves at a separate pace and represents what you said earlier, 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:26.320 the five planets and Earth in the moon basically Sun 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:28.600 and Sun and moon basically anything we can see from 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.240 Earth at this point, right, And these are the gears inside, 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:35.560 and the gears are physically representing how the say, the 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:39.160 Sun and the Moon interact. Well, now these are the hands, right, 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.360 but then they're driving the hands, and the hands have 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.040 a representation in the form of a colored orb on 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.840 the face of the actual mechanism the machine exactly. So 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:51.160 on the back side, you've got two more dial systems. UH. 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.520 One is a calendar of the lunar and solar eclipse, 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.800 and another one UM, basically, like you said, was the 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:02.320 sports calendar. The Olympics are coming up than four years 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:06.600 after that, there'll be more Olympics, so four years. So 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.680 on the front, it was at tracked the day right. 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:11.560 That was the big the big front face of it. 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:15.720 I believe it did. Um. And then on the back 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:20.240 when it's when it's tracking eclipses um that that actually 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.879 so chuck. When you make a clock, the whole purpose 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.359 of a clock is so any guy can come along 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:29.399 and be like, oh, it's this day right. So you 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:31.600 want your clock to be accurate. The problem is if 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:35.119 you're tracking just the solar calendar, you're tracking just the 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.439 movement of the moon, your clock is going to or 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.480 your calendar is eventually going to fall out a sink 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.720 and all of a sudden, something like one of the 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.760 solstic says, your summer solstice is gonna show up in 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.080 December after eighteen years, right. So to do that, and 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:54.000 this has been like one of the big things that 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.520 clockmakers and calendar makers have had to deal with forever. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.639 You have to figure out how to reconcile the movement 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.719 of the sun and the moon with your calendar so 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:09.560 that it stays up to date literally right and mechanically 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:15.560 but also mathematically right. So several great thinkers figured out 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:20.560 that if you take um the tracking of the moon 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:25.480 and extrapolated by enough times, it will eventually sync up 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.760 years down the line with the solar calendar. I think 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:32.800 over the course of like nineteen years, and this is 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:36.240 what's called the metonic cycle. Right, there's like five hundred 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:40.600 and thirty four phases of the moon in one nineteen 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:44.159 year period, and if you can track that, then you 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.200 can keep your calendar in sync. This is the level 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:53.760 of sophistication that the the antick, THEA mechanism operates on. 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.679 And to this point, we did not realize that the 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.240 ancient Greeks had this level of understanding of astronomy. Yeah, 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:03.160 it was. It was a big It was a big 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:04.679 fine for a lot of reasons, and that's one of 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:06.840 them for sure. Yeah. And one of the reasons that 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:09.040 we know that they knew this and we're not just 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.520 kind of putting our own ideas onto it is when 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:17.200 they use that computer tomography, they found inscriptions on all 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.320 these different gears which basically said how they work and 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.280 what they track, which is another reason this find was 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.920 so amazing. It basically had an instruction manual engraved on it. 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.439 That's right, and we will talk more about that right 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:47.520 after this. All right, So you're talking about the inscriptions, um, 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:49.840 Like you said, it was a user's guide. If there's 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:53.120 going to be a sophisticated piece of equipment, like, uh, 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.440 this computer, it's gonna come with a book that says 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:00.679 here's how you use it. Uh. So the finding I mean, 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:02.760 they're doing a pretty good job of discovering the stuff 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:04.600 on their own, but then finding the user's guide and 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.919 piecing that together became even a bigger part of the puzzle. 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:09.920 It did. And then that user guy. It also too 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:12.760 if like you're an anthropologist from five years in the 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.600 future and you happened upon a user guide to a 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:19.879 mac or something, right, it also describes like the level 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.640 of technology that the people who built this computer had, 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:25.800 Like in writing, it says, this is what we know, 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:30.680 this is what we understand. So again, this backdated the 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:35.520 understanding of astronomy among the Greeks too, far earlier than 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.399 we'd ever given them credit for. And it confirmed a 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.760 lot of stuff that had been thrown out over the 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:44.640 years as flights of fancy your imagination by writers who 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:48.000 had cited this kind of understanding um of the people 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.760 of their time, and later historians were like, these people 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.240 were just just making up and it was a lucky guess. 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:57.440 This this mechanism has helped show No, these these guys 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.760 actually knew what they were talking about. Yeah. One of 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:03.400 those was UM. There was a belief, uh, well by 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:07.199 some but not held by others, that UM ancient Greeks 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:11.359 had calendars where they excluded certain days to adjust the 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:13.640 lengths of the months. A lot of people like, no, 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:16.199 no, no no, no, there's there's no way that they were 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:20.680 that sophisticated this machine basically, and the accompanying guide book 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:24.680 proved it to be true, which is pretty great. And 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.760 because of its sophistication, there a list of people from 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:31.200 that time that they think may have had a hand 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.639 in this UM. Of course, Archimedes, he's gonna be in 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.919 there anytime something specialist found. Yeah, and there's actually writing 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:42.160 about Archimedes creating a like a a sphere, a three 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:46.120 dimensional model that actually doesn't really sound like the antithera 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.600 mechanism now, but it will be on any list if 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:53.800 you find something that, like any mechanism, is sophisticated. Hipparchus, 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:56.320 who I think, I don't know if we talked about 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:00.760 him yet or not. He's a mathematician and astronomer, and uh, 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.720 I think he the time period worked out for him, 0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:05.480 so he could have been one of the people involved. 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.760 My money's on him, you know, yeah, or his student 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:16.360 Poseidonest Okay, was that Posidonius? Yeah, I like Poseidoness. I'm 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:18.239 sure he did too, because that makes him sound like 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:23.840 a Greek god. Yeah. Uh. There are also some other hints, 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.160 you know, trying to piece together the mystery. UM. One 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.960 of the inscriptions refers to an athletic event in Rhodes, 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:35.720 which is where Hipparcus taught, where his school was. Yeah, 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:38.480 and there's a man named Alexander Jones. He's a specialist 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.080 at n y U and that's what he said. My 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:45.240 money's on roads. Is that that's where this thing came from, Yeah, Hipparcus, Yeah, 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:50.760 maybe Poseidoness. The other thing that helps is UM, well, 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:55.600 it doesn't help necessarily UM Hipparcus's case, but it kind 0:22:55.600 --> 0:23:00.840 of excludes Archimedes. Some researchers um looked at all Babylonian 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:04.640 records of eclipses and tried to sink this thing up, 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.800 and apparently they were able to exclude hundreds of different 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:12.760 possibilities and settled on two oh five b c E 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.600 being the start date for the mechanism. Yeah, I think 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:18.880 it's a little older than they originally thought, right, Yeah, 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.760 they were thinking fifty two hundred BC, and they're like, no, 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:25.719 two oh five is probably the date that this thing 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:28.800 was intended to be set to. Because again, this thing's 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:33.000 tracking the movements of the bodies in the heavens based 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:35.520 on the movement of the sun in the moon, and 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:38.480 how do you track that by tracking eclipses? So you 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:40.520 would want to set it to an eclipse because there 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:42.800 has to be some starting point to set it to, right, 0:23:43.240 --> 0:23:45.760 So they figured it was two oh five. Well, Archimedes, 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:48.640 as you remember, we did a whole episode on him. 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:52.200 We did someone the Death Ray. Yes, um, he was 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:55.840 killed by a Roman soldier in two twelve, um because 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:58.080 he wouldn't pay attention to the soldier who was telling 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:01.879 him to um, pay tension, I think. But he was 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.399 killed in two twelve, so that probably excludes him. He 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:08.560 was so smart he knew that of an eclipse was 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:11.680 coming in seven years and wanted his mechanism to start. 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:15.240 Then he was so broke he couldn't pay attention. Here 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:17.440 we hear that one. No, this is my first time 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:21.440 but hearing that joke. Yeah, yeah, those are good, you know. 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:27.760 In the burn contest or whatever your mama jokes. Yeah, yeah, kids, 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:31.480 it's a good one though. Uh what else? What else 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:33.119