Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from dot
Speaker 1: com even everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm joined today by a special guest host,
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Josie, Hello, Hi. You totally cannot follow instructions.
Speaker 1: I said hello and you said hi. Joe, of course
Speaker 1: is one of my co hosts on another show, Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: And so Joe, I am so thankful you could join
Speaker 1: me here today. Lauren, of course, is out on vacation
Speaker 1: right now. So Joe kindly agreed to step in. And
Speaker 1: I gave Joe the the the the ability to choose
Speaker 1: whatever topic he wanted to pick, as long as it
Speaker 1: wasn't something that we had, you know, covered extensively in
Speaker 1: tech stuff in the past. So, Joe, what would you
Speaker 1: like to talk about? Well, um, on Forward Thinking, we
Speaker 1: usually talk about the future or another and um, so
Speaker 1: I want it to go in completely the opposite direction
Speaker 1: and talk about the technology of the past. And I
Speaker 1: started thinking, I wonder, what's the oldest computer that we
Speaker 1: know about? Oh, I got you. So we're talking nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six with any ac right, that computer that you
Speaker 1: would end up programming with lots of plugs and switches.
Speaker 1: Not at all. Wow, No, so wait are you you're
Speaker 1: saying it's older than that? Older? Okay? All right, well fine,
Speaker 1: how about the ninety two that's the Tennis soft Berry
Speaker 1: Computer or ABC, which was built at Iowa State College
Speaker 1: which now university obviously, but it was there was a
Speaker 1: patent dispute actually, that was decided in the United States
Speaker 1: government about whether any AC or the ABC computer were first,
Speaker 1: and ultimately they said that it uh, you could not
Speaker 1: have anyone to claim they were the ones to invent
Speaker 1: the computer. That's the first one, right, ABC computer. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: N one. We're starting to get a little fuzzy here,
Speaker 1: but all right. So Conrad Zeus builds the Z three
Speaker 1: computer and that was also the same year when the
Speaker 1: first BOMBA was built, you know, one of the devices
Speaker 1: meant to help decrypt German messages. That's it, right, alright.
Speaker 1: Ninety nine George Stibbitts completes the complex number calculator, the
Speaker 1: c n C at Bell Telephone Laboratories. We just finished
Speaker 1: talking about Bell Labs. This has got to be it.
Speaker 1: And even in the first demonstration he used teletype so
Speaker 1: that he could program this remotely. Over special telephone line.
Speaker 1: So it was the first remote computer as well. So
Speaker 1: that's it, right, I think you need to think less electricity, Fine, Fine,
Speaker 1: eight thirty seven. The analytical Engine. Charles Babbage, he designs this,
Speaker 1: never finishes it in his lifetime. But of course that
Speaker 1: is the device that Ada Lovelace, the Enchantress of numbers,
Speaker 1: had possibly even created computer programs for algorithms where she
Speaker 1: envisioned a time where you could encode things like music
Speaker 1: and poetry into mathematics. That's it, the analytical engine. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna talk about that. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: about two years off, say what not? Not about almost? Okay,
Speaker 1: so what are you talking about? I'm talking about something
Speaker 1: that is called the antique antique antique. Oh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have this problem the whole time. The anti Cithera message, Yes,
Speaker 1: the anti Cithera mechanism or also known as the antikathera mechanism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all depends on the r which pronunciation you follow.
Speaker 1: Antiquithera seems to be fairly commonplace. So we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and use that one and probably switch off without
Speaker 1: even thinking about it. All right, I know a little
Speaker 1: bit about this. But I guess before we talk about
Speaker 1: this mechanism, maybe we need to say what the heck
Speaker 1: is Anti Cithera. For anyone who is not familiar with
Speaker 1: the geography of Greece, you may not know this. This
Speaker 1: refers to a place. Yeah, it's an island in the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean Sea. And if you um, if you imagine you're
Speaker 1: looking at the Mediterranean, it's the small island that's between
Speaker 1: Crete to the south and the Peloponnesian Peninsula up to
Speaker 1: the north, so the mainland of Greece, and it's right
Speaker 1: there in the middle. Um, there's a bigger island just
Speaker 1: called Cythera, and this is a smaller one offset from it,
Speaker 1: called Anti So if Antikithera and Kythera were to collide,
Speaker 1: it would just destroy one another. Total positronic revers Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell him about the twinkie. So, you know, joking aside.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that this is where that mechanism was
Speaker 1: was made? Um? No, probably not. This is where the
Speaker 1: mechanism was discovered. It got its name, gotcha. So someone
Speaker 1: was walking around Anti Cithera one day and they stubbed
Speaker 1: their toe and oh what's this and found the world's
Speaker 1: oldest computer. No, it's much creepier. Um. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: story goes like this, around the year nineteen hundred, there
Speaker 1: was a group of sponge divers who were off the
Speaker 1: coast of Antikythera, and they were doing their diving and
Speaker 1: guess whatever sponge divers do, they were gathering sponges, gathering
Speaker 1: sponges to wash all their dishes exactly. Um. So they
Speaker 1: were doing their thing. But apparently one of the divers
Speaker 1: 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 statos. Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: what he was seeing were statues. There were bronze and
Speaker 1: marble statues that were part of the payload of a
Speaker 1: almost well, I guess about exactly two year old ship
Speaker 1: wreck of a ship that was a Roman ship, a
Speaker 1: large Roman ship carrying a lot of cargo, much of
Speaker 1: it probably stolen or looted cargo. Right, we're talking at
Speaker 1: an era just around the time when the Romans were
Speaker 1: beginning to uh, let's say, incorporate the Hellenistic societies into
Speaker 1: their empire. Course, so it had all these Greek artifacts
Speaker 1: on it and luxury items, like really expensive stuff in
Speaker 1: the Greek world. Uh. Yeah. And so the idea is,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly what the ship was doing. What
Speaker 1: we think it was probably a ship that was returning
Speaker 1: to Rome from some destination uh in the Greek world.
Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of these Greek artifacts,
Speaker 1: including currency. Uh. They had like you said, statues, they
Speaker 1: had lots of pottery, um, and they had this this device,
Speaker 1: which was well, at first it was just a lump,
Speaker 1: right yeah, right, yeah, first. Well, and of course it
Speaker 1: didn't get that much attention early on because there was
Speaker 1: 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 bottom
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 a pedestal, like a like a
Speaker 1: large hardback dictionary. Um. And it's got a wooden casing,
Speaker 1: so you could open that casing up and then inside
Speaker 1: you've got this corroded mass that uh, that is all
Speaker 1: this gear formation. Now, of course the wooden casing doesn't
Speaker 1: really remain except in rotted fragmentary form. Um. But that's
Speaker 1: the basic mechanism we're dealing with. And if you start
Speaker 1: to look at it, you would see this one big
Speaker 1: gear um, but you might wonder what does this thing do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And beyond that, I mean, before we even get to that,
Speaker 1: like how old is this thing? Oh? Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean we we figured that the shipwreck happens sometime around
Speaker 1: eighty five b c. E before common eras because mostly
Speaker 1: because of the dates that we found and I say we,
Speaker 1: but the explorers found on the currency. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes Joe and I we get we get tired of
Speaker 1: working on stuff. Before thinking we pop out to the
Speaker 1: Greek islands and then just go well skin diving, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and X, by the way does mark the
Speaker 1: spot now, but we by dating things like the currency,
Speaker 1: they have sort of narrowed the ranged around eighty five
Speaker 1: b C. But that that doesn't necessarily mean that's how
Speaker 1: old the device is. No, they think that the device
Speaker 1: is older than the wreck, so it wasn't built like
Speaker 1: right before that. It's generally dated between a hundred and
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty b C. So it's thought of
Speaker 1: as a second century b c e device, right, So
Speaker 1: so it is an ancient device. Uh, that seems to
Speaker 1: be about how old it is. Uh, we've got some
Speaker 1: ideas of where it may have come from. There were some, No,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't have any The instruction manual for
Speaker 1: this device was not anywhere to be found. It was
Speaker 1: not on the glove compartment of this shipwreck, so we
Speaker 1: can't be absolutely certain. Uh. There's some speculation that maybe
Speaker 1: it was the island of Rhodes, which was known for
Speaker 1: its scholarship and also it's craftsmanship. But there are some
Speaker 1: other options as well that we can talk about. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, Um, you know, we've talked about what was
Speaker 1: made of we talked about how old it was. But yeah,
Speaker 1: what what did this thing do? And at first it
Speaker 1: was a real mystery. In fact, for like we said,
Speaker 1: like a century, it was a mystery. We just didn't
Speaker 1: have enough information to be able to determine. We had
Speaker 1: some wild guests. There were people who made some good guesses,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know the full extent yet. Um, and
Speaker 1: 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 moves 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. But we'll get into exactly
Speaker 1: what it is that this thing did. That kind of
Speaker 1: makes us consider it more of a computer device and
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: say 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 can you keep track of what's going on,
Speaker 1: and it could give you an indication of where you
Speaker 1: would need to look in the sky if you wanted
Speaker 1: to see something like Mars. It also would tell you that, oh,
Speaker 1: on this particular date, you will have a full solar eclipse.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool, yeah. In other words, an astronomical
Speaker 1: calculatory UM. And so what it would do is it
Speaker 1: would have a position of the Earth and then UM
Speaker 1: by moving the hand crank, which which no longer exists,
Speaker 1: but that's that's what figure. It was a hand crank
Speaker 1: that that provided the the kinetic energy to make everything turn.
Speaker 1: But by moving that you could see at the same time,
Speaker 1: based on a projected date in the future, the positions
Speaker 1: of the Sun of the Moon. UM probably of the
Speaker 1: planets we don't know. The planet gears are missing, probably
Speaker 1: at least the plants that the Greeks knew about, which
Speaker 1: included the probably not the planet probably not the we
Speaker 1: don't think, well, not Neptune Uranus or or if you
Speaker 1: want to be kind, Pluto. Um. They they had identified
Speaker 1: as far out as Saturn. Now, if in fact, we
Speaker 1: were to find evidence that it included these other planets
Speaker 1: as well, that, as far as we know, they didn't
Speaker 1: know about, then that would make the third part of
Speaker 1: our conversation to get a little more interesting. It also
Speaker 1: had yeah, as you said, an eclipse prediction dial uh,
Speaker 1: and that's really cool. Uh. And it also predicted cultural events.
Speaker 1: So that's 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 of the end,
Speaker 1: you could see what the what the celestial events were
Speaker 1: going to be at a planned future event that way,
Speaker 1: which is kind of handy. Um. But we'll talk specifically.
Speaker 1: We need to really get into the nitty gritty of
Speaker 1: how this is possible, and then we'll conclude at the
Speaker 1: end talking about how we know all of this stuff, because,
Speaker 1: as you're gonna learn, it's really complicated to figure out
Speaker 1: how a device works if you can't actually visualize all
Speaker 1: the gears when you first get hold of it. Before
Speaker 1: we get into that conversation, let's take a quick break
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Speaker 1: it out. All right, we're back. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: how this device actually tracked celestial events. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: we know they're all these gears. There's a hand cranky turn.
Speaker 1: It moves things forwards that you can look at what
Speaker 1: the celestial conditions are on any given date, or you
Speaker 1: can even advance it so that you can look for
Speaker 1: a specific celestial event. Let's say you're looking specifically for
Speaker 1: when is the next eclipse going to occur? So you're
Speaker 1: not looking to see what the celestial scott what the
Speaker 1: sky 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. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: all the different dials. This would be indicated by a dial,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's like an analog clock face. You
Speaker 1: would be spinning around a point to let you know
Speaker 1: when 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 more
Speaker 1: or at least thirty, probably more. So it's i think
Speaker 1: hypothesized that there were more to deal with the movement
Speaker 1: of the planet that that's just lost. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a surprise because again, like I said, when
Speaker 1: we call it bad repair, I mean you're you think
Speaker 1: about this. This is like essentially the imagine a clock
Speaker 1: that's been fused into one piece. I mean an old
Speaker 1: style gear clock fused into one piece. That's kind of
Speaker 1: and it's it's opaque, so you can't see these gears
Speaker 1: 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 events, uh and different
Speaker 1: time spans. Right, So you would have a dial that
Speaker 1: would be set up for uh, 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 I think a seventy
Speaker 1: five year dial, And these dials were to refer to
Speaker 1: things that patterns that would repeat once you hit those
Speaker 1: time frames, so like every nineteen years, this one set
Speaker 1: of pattern would repeat itself. So that's why they have
Speaker 1: these different dials to indicate exactly what's happening at exactly
Speaker 1: what time. UH. What I loved was the idea that
Speaker 1: there was one gear specifically devoted to showing the phase
Speaker 1: of the moon. So not only would you see the
Speaker 1: position of the moon on any given date, but you
Speaker 1: would also see what phase it was in, whether it
Speaker 1: was waxing or waning, a new moon, full moon, whatever,
Speaker 1: and and uh, I really thought that was very clever.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you essentially either either refer to the dates
Speaker 1: and look at the celestial events to compare the two,
Speaker 1: or you had said it so that you would look
Speaker 1: at a specific configuration of the celestial body and then
Speaker 1: look at what date corresponded to it. It's um kind
Speaker 1: of amazing to imagine the complex planning and craftsmanship that
Speaker 1: went into a machine like this, because, um, when you
Speaker 1: start thinking about it, Okay, say somebody set you down
Speaker 1: and told you to try to build something like this,
Speaker 1: and you had you know, it was in book test.
Speaker 1: You knew what time frame all these celestial events would
Speaker 1: occur in. How would you do it? Yeah, I mean God,
Speaker 1: so you would have some kind of figure out the
Speaker 1: relationships between the sizes of gears um and the way
Speaker 1: they would interlock to create fractional relationships between of the
Speaker 1: movements of all the different bodies at the same time.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that if this thing is reflecting
Speaker 1: say planets and stuff like that, well, from a geocentric
Speaker 1: point of view, the movement of the planets is not
Speaker 1: just a simple circle. I mean you see them, they
Speaker 1: persiss and then they go backwards and all of these
Speaker 1: things exactly. So if you and there's a fellow named
Speaker 1: Michael T. Wright who built a replica of this device,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about him probably in a bit,
Speaker 1: but he there's a great video that demonstrates him using
Speaker 1: this machine to show the movement of these different elements
Speaker 1: and sometimes you see them moving kind of backword compared
Speaker 1: to other elements, and you think, wow, the gears have
Speaker 1: to account for that too. The gears have to be
Speaker 1: able to do very complex movements of these uh, these
Speaker 1: these arms that are on these dials in order to
Speaker 1: reflect what is really happening. And while the model itself
Speaker 1: uh does depict a geocentric view of celestial bodies, we
Speaker 1: can't be sure that the person who built it necessarily
Speaker 1: ascribed necessarily ascribed to a geocentric philosophy. Oh, that's certainly true,
Speaker 1: because for the devices function I mean it was, it
Speaker 1: was functionally geocentric, right, because we're from exactly, even if
Speaker 1: the person who made it actually thought the Earth went
Speaker 1: around the Sun, it would still look the same pretty much.
Speaker 1: Because if you're reflecting how the world, how the how
Speaker 1: the celestial you know, elements look compared to being on
Speaker 1: the Earth, it makes no sense to make it anything
Speaker 1: other than geocentric. So the heliocentric theories had been placed
Speaker 1: ahead of when we think this device was made. So
Speaker 1: it's possible we don't know because there were still people
Speaker 1: who who's ascribed to a geocentric worldview. I that was dominant, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because it was similar to what we would see
Speaker 1: centuries later, where to propose such a thing as a
Speaker 1: helos helio centric view would mean that you might suffer
Speaker 1: a little bit of let's say, you might get ostracized
Speaker 1: with extreme prejudice. People didn't like here in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, you know, it does look like it was
Speaker 1: going to show you not only the Sun and Moon's movements,
Speaker 1: which is already complex enough because they don't move at
Speaker 1: the same you know rate or you know, they changed positions,
Speaker 1: uh differently relative to one another. Uh. Then to throw
Speaker 1: in the other planets makes that or the plants that
Speaker 1: the Greeks knew about makes it even more complex. So
Speaker 1: here's the question, does this count as a computer? I
Speaker 1: would say absolutely. I would say so too, And I've
Speaker 1: got a little argument here. Tell me what you think
Speaker 1: about so um, I'd say the basic definition of a
Speaker 1: computer a lot of times it's included that it's electronic.
Speaker 1: But let's take that part out and say, well, whether
Speaker 1: or not it's electronic. Um, a computer is like an
Speaker 1: interactive machine 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. Like,
Speaker 1: assuming that you put in the same input and you're
Speaker 1: running it through the same algorithm, you're always going to
Speaker 1: get the same output. Okay, so both definitions work very
Speaker 1: well together. Yeah, I'd say the biggest distinction is that
Speaker 1: today's computers we think of as being general use. So
Speaker 1: you you have hardware that can compute, but you've also
Speaker 1: got software to boss the hardware around, so it can
Speaker 1: tell it to compute in different ways. Right, So in
Speaker 1: that way, you can have a single machine allow you
Speaker 1: to do Excel spreadsheets or play you know, uh, first
Speaker 1: person shooter game. Right, But obviously without electronics, this uh,
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 astron comical pathways are represented by the mechanical
Speaker 1: math that's done between the teeth and the gears. So
Speaker 1: like 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 that reflect the computed values of
Speaker 1: the of what you're looking for and even as I
Speaker 1: have said before, you could do it the other way,
Speaker 1: where you keep turning the dial until you get the
Speaker 1: configuration you were interested in and then you look at
Speaker 1: the date. So it works in either sense, and uh,
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. I mean, it's when you think about how
Speaker 1: precise you have to be to make sure you get this,
Speaker 1: and not only that, but just the huge amount of
Speaker 1: information you have to have at your disposal to even
Speaker 1: start in the craftsmanship of this thing. Because the Greeks
Speaker 1: had a lot of of information about astronomy, some of
Speaker 1: it they got from the Babylonians, so the Babylonians were
Speaker 1: known as very very much interested in astronomy. The Greeks
Speaker 1: were as well, and so they had to have had
Speaker 1: all this observation data that they had, the things that
Speaker 1: they had observed about the movement of celestial objects in
Speaker 1: the sky and how those patterns would arise, in order
Speaker 1: for them to plan that out into a mechanical device.
Speaker 1: And that to me is really amazing because you're not
Speaker 1: talking about, oh, you know, every four weeks, this one
Speaker 1: event happens. Now, some of these cycles, like I said,
Speaker 1: are incredibly long. You had a nineteen year cycle, you
Speaker 1: had a seventy six year cycle, you had a fifty
Speaker 1: four year cycle. All of these were taken into account
Speaker 1: to explain the movement of celestial objects in various ways,
Speaker 1: whether it's a solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse, or
Speaker 1: that you get both a lunar and a solar eclipse
Speaker 1: within a certain amount of time. Uh, not to mention
Speaker 1: the movement of the other planets. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: information that you have to have compiled before you ever
Speaker 1: cut into a sheet of bronze. Uh. Yes, it's certainly
Speaker 1: is and and even harder is imagining how you would
Speaker 1: begin to compute that data. Yeah, I mean nobody. Um well,
Speaker 1: actually this is a good question. Um, had anybody ever
Speaker 1: made anything like this before? Obviously we don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: right well, we don't have evidence this is the earliest
Speaker 1: existing device. In fact, we don't have any other devices
Speaker 1: to point to. Uh. And let's be clear when we're
Speaker 1: calling it the earliest known computer, that that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we think that there's nothing that like this that could
Speaker 1: have come before it. That just means the it's the
Speaker 1: earliest one that we have, so and we don't have
Speaker 1: any others. It's not like, there are you know, twenty
Speaker 1: other examples of this. In fact, if you want to
Speaker 1: look at for another object that's as complex as this one,
Speaker 1: you have to go about fifteen hundred years further into
Speaker 1: the early Renaissance and look at the Middle East, China,
Speaker 1: and Europe for devices that start to equal this level
Speaker 1: of complexity. However, these historians of chanical engineering, they say
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff doesn't show up until late medieval
Speaker 1: clockwork at the earliest. So when you take that into account,
Speaker 1: you think, well, you know, is this is this an anomaly?
Speaker 1: Is it a one off site some mad genius come
Speaker 1: up with us? But if you if you were to
Speaker 1: actually carefully examine those gears, and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: how people have done that over the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: if you were to very carefully examine them, you would
Speaker 1: see that they appear to have been made flawlessly, like
Speaker 1: there were no mistakes. Uh. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: experts have said that if you were to build, say
Speaker 1: a clock, and it's your first clock, it may be
Speaker 1: a functional clock, but if you were to look at
Speaker 1: the clockwork, you might see where there were mistakes that
Speaker 1: were made and then corrected for later on. There, there's
Speaker 1: no evidence of that in this device, which suggests that
Speaker 1: whoever built it had done it at least a few
Speaker 1: times before to perfect the whole process before building another one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and combine with the fact that this thing is just
Speaker 1: so smart that it suggests it was probably not the
Speaker 1: only one of its kind. It probably came from a
Speaker 1: line of similar devices, maybe of advancing complexity. And you
Speaker 1: might think, well, if this is the case where the
Speaker 1: heck is everything else and well, some of it could
Speaker 1: just be lost or destroyed. And also being made out
Speaker 1: of bronze means that it's a valuable resource which occasionally
Speaker 1: for other purposes, like I don't know, war, you would
Speaker 1: melt down so that you could use it for other stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, think about what we're talking about the first
Speaker 1: and second century b C. In the Hellenistic world. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a time when stuff might have gotten grabbed
Speaker 1: and taken to another place, melted down, or just lost,
Speaker 1: just like just like this one was lost. There's stuff
Speaker 1: going on if you look at uh, and we should
Speaker 1: mention this stuff you missed In History Class Sister podcast
Speaker 1: they did an episode on this same topic. Fantastic episode,
Speaker 1: highly recommended you should definitely go listen to it. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of the things they pointed out was that
Speaker 1: if you look at bronze statues from that era, they're very,
Speaker 1: very few of them, and I think like nine out
Speaker 1: of ten came from shipwrecks because the ones that were
Speaker 1: left on land, more frequently than not, had been melted
Speaker 1: down for other purposes. So it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: There was not necessarily a sense of permanency in the
Speaker 1: time of the world. Okay, so we don't have, like,
Speaker 1: in terms of archaeology, another device like this from the time.
Speaker 1: Has anybody ever described a device like this from the time? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Do you have any actual information
Speaker 1: on that? Because when I was looking for it, I
Speaker 1: was it seemed to me at the time that everyone
Speaker 1: was absolutely shocked by this device, because it didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have any kind of shock, shocked to the point
Speaker 1: where they were wondering if it was perhaps a hoax,
Speaker 1: that maybe someone had planted this thing and it was
Speaker 1: a fake. But it may be that there are sources
Speaker 1: I'm I'm aware of. Do you know any I think
Speaker 1: there are ancient descriptions of ore ries. Okay, So those
Speaker 1: are wouldn't be exactly like this, but sort of ancient
Speaker 1: models of the movement of the Planet's interesting. So it Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course we do know that there were philosophers
Speaker 1: who had described, uh the very motions that this device enacted,
Speaker 1: that you know they were they were just describing it
Speaker 1: for scholarly purposes, and this device would show that in
Speaker 1: action if you were to move the handle. Well, here's
Speaker 1: an interesting question. Who built this thing? Yeah? Where did
Speaker 1: it come from? We don't We don't know, is the
Speaker 1: short answer. We have some suspicions. Uh sometimes the name
Speaker 1: Archimedes gets thrown around there. Yeah, so one clue is
Speaker 1: just that Archimedes he was around, you know, a century
Speaker 1: before this, and he was a genius inventor and uh
Speaker 1: or at least we assume, so some of his inventions
Speaker 1: we cannot actually be certain were ever built. But sure,
Speaker 1: Oh come on, he built a death ray, just just
Speaker 1: death ray, okay, probably and a giant a giant arm
Speaker 1: that would upset besieging ships. I want to believe, I understand. Okay, So, uh, well,
Speaker 1: is that the only evidence that it might have been
Speaker 1: our comedies? Well, no, Archimedes, as you might remember, was
Speaker 1: from Uh. He lived in Syracuse in the which is unfortunate. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: unfortunate for our comedies. Uh, he lived in Syracuse. And
Speaker 1: an interesting fact about the device that we discovered later
Speaker 1: is that, okay, so the device has inscriptions all over it,
Speaker 1: very faint inscriptions, and they're hard to read because of
Speaker 1: all the corrosion from the thousands of years. But what
Speaker 1: they discovered was, oh, okay, actually we can make out
Speaker 1: some of these with some of this imaging we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about in the next section. And it's in
Speaker 1: coin A Greek, So that was sort of like coin
Speaker 1: A Greek was the lingua franca of the Hellenistic world,
Speaker 1: and you know, people spoke it all over the place.
Speaker 1: But the calendar that was represented on here reflected the
Speaker 1: kind of calendar that would be used in the Ionian area,
Speaker 1: which would include Syracuse. Right, So that that gives at
Speaker 1: least some again circumstantial evidence that perhaps our comedies could
Speaker 1: have been involved in this. Then again, our comedies probably
Speaker 1: died too early to have made this particular device due
Speaker 1: to an over zealous soldier. We know he died in
Speaker 1: think to twelve BC, and the device was made in
Speaker 1: the probably sometimes between a d So, Yeah, that does
Speaker 1: put some he died too early to have personally made it, right,
Speaker 1: Maybe he made an earlier one. Yeah, And that's one
Speaker 1: idea is that it could have come out of a
Speaker 1: sort of a Syracuse based school of our comedies maybe.
Speaker 1: And again, the Island of Rhodes is another example that
Speaker 1: people have have presented, saying that they were very much
Speaker 1: on that island. There was a scholarly center that was
Speaker 1: devoted to astronomy, and that they also had craftsmen who
Speaker 1: worked in clockwork type devices. So it's possible that it
Speaker 1: could have originated from that area. We just we don't know.
Speaker 1: There's some clues there, but we we don't know for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another name I just want to mention real quick that
Speaker 1: gets brought up is Hipparcos. Hipparcos Hippocaus of of Nicia.
Speaker 1: And he was a Greek astronomer um and geographer and
Speaker 1: he did the maths. He was a smart guy trigonometry right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he was also uh he wasn't Hippocrates, but anyway,
Speaker 1: he he He also was known for describing the movements
Speaker 1: of the sun and the moon, right and uh, and
Speaker 1: some indications that uh, it maybe could have had something
Speaker 1: to do with him or that. Uh, the astronomical theories
Speaker 1: that are reflected in this, including like the movement of
Speaker 1: the moon, reflects his thoughts about the movement. So it
Speaker 1: may not be that he had a direct hand in it,
Speaker 1: but that perhaps a student or someone familiar with his
Speaker 1: work took the theory and put it into a physical object. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I have another theory about who created it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling. I know what you're gonna say.
Speaker 1: But hit me with it, buddy. Okay, Well, it goes
Speaker 1: like this, This mechanism is way too advanced to have
Speaker 1: been built by human beings at the time. Obviously it
Speaker 1: was built 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 a tongue in cheek because you
Speaker 1: and I share a common opinion on this about how
Speaker 1: it's absolutely ridiculous nonsense to assume this. Yeah, for one thing,
Speaker 1: it it really, it really says a lot about the
Speaker 1: cynicism of people when it comes to the creativity of
Speaker 1: human beings and ingenuity and our ability to process complex
Speaker 1: thoughts and bring them into reality. You know. I mean
Speaker 1: it's the same argument that no, the Pyramids, no human
Speaker 1: could have built those. Actually thousands of humans built those.
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of humans built those. Yeah, it's um,
Speaker 1: it's not like somebody in ancient Greece building a warp drive, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's somebody who was building something that was totally
Speaker 1: available to someone with the technology of the time. All
Speaker 1: they had to be was really really smart, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We know that the astronomical knowledge was there. You know,
Speaker 1: the scholarship was there. We know that the bronze working
Speaker 1: was there. We know that people there were craftsmen who
Speaker 1: generally it wasn't as good as this, right, but there
Speaker 1: were craftsmen who could create incredible work. A lot of
Speaker 1: bronze U Now, a lot of those that haven't survived
Speaker 1: because of again the fact that people would melt stuff down.
Speaker 1: But the ones that have survived have shown that there's
Speaker 1: you know, there has there was a level of artistry there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think the bottom line is it's quite exceptional
Speaker 1: for its time, but it's not unthinkable. And so we
Speaker 1: are discounting the h the alien slash time traveler slash reptilian.
Speaker 1: So whatever I mean, if it was from Aliens, you'd
Speaker 1: think that, you know, it would reflect a little more
Speaker 1: complete astronomical knowledge. You might be electronic or something. Also,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be geocentrically talked about it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: functionally geocentric, even though the person who made it might
Speaker 1: have been right. But why would an alien bother to
Speaker 1: make something from Earth's perspective when oh, yeah, they could
Speaker 1: make an oory from the outside right, including the Earth
Speaker 1: revolving around the sun. Yeah, why would they do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me. Not
Speaker 1: knowing about planets past Saturn, you know that maybe they
Speaker 1: just thought those were those were not really high up
Speaker 1: on the list. Yeah, you don't wanna, you don't want
Speaker 1: to visit those. Yeah, So I think we can discount
Speaker 1: the whole alien hypothesis. So we've got more we want
Speaker 1: to talk about exactly we want to We want to
Speaker 1: cover how it is that we actually know this stuff.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break and thank our sponsor. Alright, so we have discussed
Speaker 1: what it was, we discussed how it worked. How do
Speaker 1: we know that it did this thing? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a giant hunk of corrodd 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 show that there were lots of gears
Speaker 1: inside this hunk of corrod at bronze, and that they
Speaker 1: were connected in some way. But those early X rays
Speaker 1: were not perfect. Mostly they due to the fact that
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell depth with it, so you couldn't see
Speaker 1: how 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 sphy, Yeah, you start scanning it
Speaker 1: from all different angles using different approaches. Did you did
Speaker 1: you come across the powerful X ray machines called blade
Speaker 1: Runner I didn't. Yeah, yeah, so blade Runner X ray machines. Sorry,
Speaker 1: they used lots of different X ray machines throughout the
Speaker 1: study of this device, as we began to learn that
Speaker 1: this was far more important from a historical perspective than
Speaker 1: anyone had had thought leading up to this. I mean
Speaker 1: everyone was thinking that these other artifacts were really important
Speaker 1: and this other thing was a curiosity. But as we
Speaker 1: learned more about it, we realized, whoa this thing is amazing. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: the the various X ray devices we use showed more
Speaker 1: or of the relation of all these different gears, so
Speaker 1: we got to see how they were laid out inside
Speaker 1: this hunk of corroded bronze. But the Blade Runner device,
Speaker 1: all right, So it was an X ray machine that
Speaker 1: was designed to look for tiny cracks and turbine blades.
Speaker 1: That's what the original design of these machines was for,
Speaker 1: and to tell whether or not you're a replican. Also
Speaker 1: to tell whether Yeah, I would ask you, if a
Speaker 1: turtle is on its back, what do you do? Why
Speaker 1: doesn't the mechanism turn the turtle over. Yeah, so anyway
Speaker 1: it would look for these tiny It was designed so
Speaker 1: that you could detect the tiniest of cracks and turbine blades,
Speaker 1: so that you could do maintenance before a catastrophic failure.
Speaker 1: They used it to look at this device, the anti
Speaker 1: antikythera device. We keep avoiding saying it so that I
Speaker 1: don't fall over myself. Let's say it three times together,
Speaker 1: Jonathan An. That's fantastic, all right, now you have to
Speaker 1: say it backwards. No. Um. So the antikythera device, the
Speaker 1: blade Runner thing, it looks at it, and it actually
Speaker 1: is able to see because it has such precise measurements.
Speaker 1: It's able to to to distinguish what the tiny, shallow
Speaker 1: carvings are on those dials. That's how we were able
Speaker 1: to read the words the inscriptions, Yeah, because some of
Speaker 1: them were just very faded already, even before you talk
Speaker 1: about the corrosion effort in there or element in there,
Speaker 1: I should say. And the blade Runner X rays were
Speaker 1: able to measure these very tiny changes in the surface
Speaker 1: of these different dials, and that's how we were able
Speaker 1: to see what the writing was and thus able to
Speaker 1: really um translated and figure out what this thing actually did.
Speaker 1: And that's how people once they started reading it, once
Speaker 1: they started being able to read the writing, it became
Speaker 1: clear that this was a far more sophisticated device than
Speaker 1: what what predecessors were thinking. Even the earliest guesses were
Speaker 1: things that probably can predict solar and lunar movements, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's some form of calendar, but it No one
Speaker 1: was really aware of how sophisticated it was until we
Speaker 1: were able to take this closer look. And I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty phenomenal what we've learned about it so far,
Speaker 1: Like those shallow engravings have told us pretty much everything
Speaker 1: we need to know about its basic function, and that's
Speaker 1: how we're able to draw some conclusions and clearing the
Speaker 1: conclusions that lad Michael t right to build his replica
Speaker 1: of the device to the point where he's got a
Speaker 1: working replica. Uh it as far as we can tell,
Speaker 1: it's as accurate to the original as we can possibly get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should look this up on YouTube and see it,
Speaker 1: because it's not just a model, it is a working replica. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he built the machine. He he used very similar methods
Speaker 1: as to what the ancient Greeks would have He used
Speaker 1: the same sort of dimension of gears. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that we don't he's working from an
Speaker 1: incomplete model. Even with our very very sophisticated techniques these days,
Speaker 1: you can't see what's not there, right, there's still some
Speaker 1: missing pieces that we don't really have. You know, he
Speaker 1: was able to recreate it based upon what we think
Speaker 1: the device was meant to do, and his works and
Speaker 1: the videos are amazing. When you watch the just the
Speaker 1: minute movements of each of these pieces in relation to
Speaker 1: one another and think of how complex this is, it's
Speaker 1: mind blowing. It's well, and it's also it's a it's
Speaker 1: a gorgeous device, you know. It's just it's a beautiful device.
Speaker 1: You would look at and you might think. Originally, if
Speaker 1: you were just to glance at it, you might think
Speaker 1: it was either a really weird clock or maybe some
Speaker 1: sort of navigational equipment for like a ship or something,
Speaker 1: just because you've got bronze and wood there. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: once you've get a deeper understanding of what it is,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty nifty. I think was made with brass
Speaker 1: instead of I think you're right. I think it was
Speaker 1: brass instead of bronze, So Yeah, even more ship like
Speaker 1: then with the brass and would combination. Yeah. There's recent
Speaker 1: scholarship going on with a project called the antikit thro
Speaker 1: A Mechanism Research Projects. 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: Antikitthera Shipwreck, the ship the treasures and the mechanism, and
Speaker 1: it's at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. Yeah,
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 in at shipwreck, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: people have gone back to that shipwreck and found more
Speaker 1: things around it since that initial discovery, UM, and so
Speaker 1: there's there. There's also been a lot of symposia that
Speaker 1: they've held. They've had a lot of gatherings where they
Speaker 1: they combine research and they published that research. There's lots
Speaker 1: of information on their website about the device and the
Speaker 1: circumstances around its discovery and just the process of discovery
Speaker 1: as we used more and more sophisticated techniques to examine it.
Speaker 1: And it's really a great resource. I highly recommend visiting
Speaker 1: that website. I'll link to that on our Facebook page
Speaker 1: and Twitter handle so you guys can see it, because
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat stuff. I mean, it's um, you know.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed reading about the process they went through
Speaker 1: as they would learn more and more, and of course
Speaker 1: that hasn't finished. In fact, there's there's one thing, one
Speaker 1: question besides who built it that we don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to yet, which is why did they build it? Like?
Speaker 1: Why is it? Was it? What? What was the in purpose?
Speaker 1: Was it a scholarly tool? Was it so that they
Speaker 1: could uh create, you know, specifically plan out events to
Speaker 1: coincide with celestial events, so that perhaps it was a
Speaker 1: political tool? You know, maybe if if an eclipse is
Speaker 1: seen as a bad omen, you may want to avoid
Speaker 1: planning some big event around an eclipse just so that
Speaker 1: people don't think that the event itself is cursed. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's I'm sure in the ancient world you could
Speaker 1: probably get some amount of power just by being able
Speaker 1: to accurately predict eclipses. Yeah. Yeah, and that's another possibility.
Speaker 1: It could just be religious power or political power. We
Speaker 1: don't know, and it's possible that as much as we
Speaker 1: can learn about this device, maybe we never really figure
Speaker 1: out with any degree of certainty who built it or
Speaker 1: why it was built. In fact, I'd be amazed if
Speaker 1: we ever are able to figure out who built it.
Speaker 1: That would be phenomenal to me. Unless someone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: look here there's an inscription on the bottom Johan from Sweden.
Speaker 1: What that would would be a big upset, But not
Speaker 1: that I think that would ever happen. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was I want to float another possibility steampunks, right,
Speaker 1: so steampunk cost players. But I'm thinking that it was
Speaker 1: a steampunk convention, a certain doctor showed up at it
Speaker 1: accidentally ended up grabbing this device, and on a further
Speaker 1: adventure maybe three episodes down the line ended up accidentally
Speaker 1: dunking it into the ocean off the coast degrease. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. UM explains everything. Uh did you see
Speaker 1: the the lego really cool? Now? This wasn't We probably
Speaker 1: might not want to call it a replica because it's
Speaker 1: not trying to copy the form of the original, just
Speaker 1: the function, right, And even the function it was I
Speaker 1: think a limited part of it because it was really
Speaker 1: showing things like eclipses in the UH in the the
Speaker 1: Lego version, I don't think it necessarily showed all the
Speaker 1: movements that the antikitthera device showed because I was when
Speaker 1: I watched the video, It's like, 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 a region of time when both would occur,
Speaker 1: not both occurring at the same time. UM necessarily, but
Speaker 1: the uh, the it didn't tell you things. It didn't
Speaker 1: tell you things like the movement of the planets as
Speaker 1: far as I could tell, So it was it had
Speaker 1: a limited set of functions. That the Antikia 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 will predict
Speaker 1: when the sun passes in front of the moon that
Speaker 1: will be a bad day. I'm gonna make sure I
Speaker 1: stay indoors that day. What is that called? That's called
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's called uh Well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter because we're not. That's it's essentially called
Speaker 1: uh boy. It's sure as vaporized outside today, isn't it.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, no, that would not not go over well. Well,
Speaker 1: that kind of wraps up our discussion about this amazing device.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed it. It It was fun for
Speaker 1: us to look at something that was from the ancient world. Remember,
Speaker 1: you can write to us and suggest your own. Topics
Speaker 1: are email addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com. You
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Speaker 1: you know, the ones that we're on, not the ones
Speaker 1: that belong to us. Say that every time, but Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter and Tumbler are handled. There is tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: W Joe. Of course they can listen to the two
Speaker 1: of us and Lauren on the Forward Thinking audio podcast,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, go to FW thinking dot com sometime.
Speaker 1: You can check out that site. We've got the videos there, blogs, podcasts.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy tech stuff, I have a feeling you
Speaker 1: would really dig Forward Thinking to go check that out too,
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon for
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