WEBVTT - The Oldest Computer 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.880 Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from dot 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:15.400 com even everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.360 Strickland and I'm joined today by a special guest host, 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:23.280 Joe McCormick. Josie, Hello, Hi. You totally cannot follow instructions. 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:25.840 I said hello and you said hi. Joe, of course 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.480 is one of my co hosts on another show, Forward Thinking, 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.360 And so Joe, I am so thankful you could join 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.479 me here today. Lauren, of course, is out on vacation 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.879 right now. So Joe kindly agreed to step in. And 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.840 I gave Joe the the the the ability to choose 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:46.519 whatever topic he wanted to pick, as long as it 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:49.280 wasn't something that we had, you know, covered extensively in 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:51.519 tech stuff in the past. So, Joe, what would you 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:55.120 like to talk about? Well, um, on Forward Thinking, we 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:59.440 usually talk about the future or another and um, so 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.320 I want it to go in completely the opposite direction 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.679 and talk about the technology of the past. And I 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:11.120 started thinking, I wonder, what's the oldest computer that we 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.600 know about? Oh, I got you. So we're talking nineteen 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.480 forty six with any ac right, that computer that you 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.039 would end up programming with lots of plugs and switches. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.880 Not at all. Wow, No, so wait are you you're 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:25.480 saying it's older than that? Older? Okay? All right, well fine, 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:29.039 how about the ninety two that's the Tennis soft Berry 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.120 Computer or ABC, which was built at Iowa State College 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:35.679 which now university obviously, but it was there was a 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:40.279 patent dispute actually, that was decided in the United States 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.600 government about whether any AC or the ABC computer were first, 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:46.920 and ultimately they said that it uh, you could not 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.760 have anyone to claim they were the ones to invent 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.520 the computer. That's the first one, right, ABC computer. Okay, alright, 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.840 N one. We're starting to get a little fuzzy here, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.320 but all right. So Conrad Zeus builds the Z three 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.080 computer and that was also the same year when the 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:05.680 first BOMBA was built, you know, one of the devices 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:12.320 meant to help decrypt German messages. That's it, right, alright. 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:17.000 Ninety nine George Stibbitts completes the complex number calculator, the 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:20.919 c n C at Bell Telephone Laboratories. We just finished 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:22.440 talking about Bell Labs. This has got to be it. 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.920 And even in the first demonstration he used teletype so 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:30.320 that he could program this remotely. Over special telephone line. 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.600 So it was the first remote computer as well. So 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:37.120 that's it, right, I think you need to think less electricity, Fine, Fine, 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:43.000 eight thirty seven. The analytical Engine. Charles Babbage, he designs this, 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.600 never finishes it in his lifetime. But of course that 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:49.520 is the device that Ada Lovelace, the Enchantress of numbers, 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:54.400 had possibly even created computer programs for algorithms where she 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.200 envisioned a time where you could encode things like music 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.919 and poetry into mathematics. That's it, the analytical engine. Okay, 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:04.000 so we're gonna talk about that. You know, you're you're 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:12.240 about two years off, say what not? Not about almost? Okay, 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.480 so what are you talking about? I'm talking about something 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:20.360 that is called the antique antique antique. Oh, we're gonna 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:25.400 have this problem the whole time. The anti Cithera message, Yes, 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:29.880 the anti Cithera mechanism or also known as the antikathera mechanism. Yeah, 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.760 it all depends on the r which pronunciation you follow. 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.520 Antiquithera seems to be fairly commonplace. So we're gonna go 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:38.920 ahead and use that one and probably switch off without 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.520 even thinking about it. All right, I know a little 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:44.920 bit about this. But I guess before we talk about 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:47.000 this mechanism, maybe we need to say what the heck 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.880 is Anti Cithera. For anyone who is not familiar with 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:54.040 the geography of Greece, you may not know this. This 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:56.800 refers to a place. Yeah, it's an island in the 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.720 Mediterranean Sea. And if you um, if you imagine you're 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:03.960 looking at the Mediterranean, it's the small island that's between 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.920 Crete to the south and the Peloponnesian Peninsula up to 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.520 the north, so the mainland of Greece, and it's right 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:12.960 there in the middle. Um, there's a bigger island just 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:16.440 called Cythera, and this is a smaller one offset from it, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.640 called Anti So if Antikithera and Kythera were to collide, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:26.280 it would just destroy one another. Total positronic revers Yeah, 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:30.400 tell him about the twinkie. So, you know, joking aside. 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:32.919 Does that mean that this is where that mechanism was 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.359 was made? Um? No, probably not. This is where the 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:40.600 mechanism was discovered. It got its name, gotcha. So someone 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:44.360 was walking around Anti Cithera one day and they stubbed 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:46.839 their toe and oh what's this and found the world's 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:51.240 oldest computer. No, it's much creepier. Um. Okay, So the 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.440 story goes like this, around the year nineteen hundred, there 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:57.680 was a group of sponge divers who were off the 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:01.320 coast of Antikythera, and they were doing their diving and 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.599 guess whatever sponge divers do, they were gathering sponges, gathering 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.120 sponges to wash all their dishes exactly. Um. So they 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:10.720 were doing their thing. But apparently one of the divers 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.560 came up to the surface and he was like, guys, 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.200 there are dead women lying all over the bottom of 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.040 the ocean. There's a bunch of naked dead ladies at 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:24.679 the bottom of the ocean. Yeah, sounds creepy. But statos. Yeah, Actually, 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:28.080 what he was seeing were statues. There were bronze and 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.440 marble statues that were part of the payload of a 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.520 almost well, I guess about exactly two year old ship 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.560 wreck of a ship that was a Roman ship, a 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:42.680 large Roman ship carrying a lot of cargo, much of 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:46.360 it probably stolen or looted cargo. Right, we're talking at 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:48.800 an era just around the time when the Romans were 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:53.440 beginning to uh, let's say, incorporate the Hellenistic societies into 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:58.919 their empire. Course, so it had all these Greek artifacts 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.919 on it and luxury items, like really expensive stuff in 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.000 the Greek world. Uh. Yeah. And so the idea is, 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:08.200 we don't know exactly what the ship was doing. What 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:10.880 we think it was probably a ship that was returning 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:15.599 to Rome from some destination uh in the Greek world. 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:17.839 And so there are a lot of these Greek artifacts, 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.840 including currency. Uh. They had like you said, statues, they 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.359 had lots of pottery, um, and they had this this device, 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.440 which was well, at first it was just a lump, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.240 right yeah, right, yeah, first. Well, and of course it 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.640 didn't get that much attention early on because there was 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.360 so much other stuff down there in that shipwreck. Right, 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:42.120 So the people who went into really investigate the shipwreck 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.520 and take a look and see what was going on, 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:49.680 they didn't necessarily realize that there was something truly special, 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.600 something that was beyond just uh special from an artistic 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.839 merit point of view, but could tell us a lot 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:03.360 about how much the ancient Greeks knew about craftsmanship, about astronomy, 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.400 about math, all of these things we've become apparent, but 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:11.320 only a hundred years later, right after the explorer. So 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.560 so it it's it's forgotten for two thousand years essentially, 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.120 and then for another hundred years we don't really know 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:19.080 what it is. So it's kind of this lump of 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.600 corroded bronze inside what what used to be a wooden 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:26.560 box essentially disintegrated. Yeah, so there's like there's one big 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:31.440 remaining lump, but they're about eighty two fragments in total, right, 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.600 So one of those fragments, the main fragment, has the 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.680 vast majority of the what we know of as the 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:41.040 inner workings of whatever this device was supposed to be. 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:42.760 And we know a lot more about now, but don't 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.960 want to ruin the surprise, no, But so basically we 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:48.560 can say like what it was made of. So what 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:50.960 they think now is, Okay, this looks like it was 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:55.240 some kind of collection of bronze gears inside of a 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:57.480 wooden casing. Yeah. In fact, at first they thought it 0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.960 might only be just one gear that somehow was loose 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:01.920 from something else, and then they realized, no, there's actually 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.200 several gears here, but it's all corroded together. Yeah, it's 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:08.240 it's sort of like a fused into a big bottom 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:13.200 of the ocean, snotball, Yeah, exactly. That's very accurate. Um. 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.480 But so if you can imagine I would call like 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:20.920 imagine a mid sized dictionary, not like a pocket dictionary, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.000 but also not that huge one from the library that 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.240 you couldn't see it a pedestal, like a like a 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:32.040 large hardback dictionary. Um. And it's got a wooden casing, 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.719 so you could open that casing up and then inside 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:39.120 you've got this corroded mass that uh, that is all 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:42.439 this gear formation. Now, of course the wooden casing doesn't 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:46.680 really remain except in rotted fragmentary form. Um. But that's 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.720 the basic mechanism we're dealing with. And if you start 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:52.800 to look at it, you would see this one big 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:57.839 gear um, but you might wonder what does this thing do? Yeah? 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.040 And beyond that, I mean, before we even get to that, 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:02.840 like how old is this thing? Oh? Yeah, because I 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:06.319 mean we we figured that the shipwreck happens sometime around 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:10.480 eighty five b c. E before common eras because mostly 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.160 because of the dates that we found and I say we, 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.880 but the explorers found on the currency. Yeah. You know, 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:19.079 sometimes Joe and I we get we get tired of 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.680 working on stuff. Before thinking we pop out to the 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.720 Greek islands and then just go well skin diving, yeah, 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:28.280 you know, and X, by the way does mark the 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.560 spot now, but we by dating things like the currency, 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:34.720 they have sort of narrowed the ranged around eighty five 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:37.679 b C. But that that doesn't necessarily mean that's how 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.280 old the device is. No, they think that the device 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.000 is older than the wreck, so it wasn't built like 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.640 right before that. It's generally dated between a hundred and 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.360 a hundred and fifty b C. So it's thought of 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:52.520 as a second century b c e device, right, So 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.200 so it is an ancient device. Uh, that seems to 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.679 be about how old it is. Uh, we've got some 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.880 ideas of where it may have come from. There were some, No, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.200 we don't we don't have any The instruction manual for 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:09.040 this device was not anywhere to be found. It was 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.079 not on the glove compartment of this shipwreck, so we 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.720 can't be absolutely certain. Uh. There's some speculation that maybe 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.320 it was the island of Rhodes, which was known for 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:21.400 its scholarship and also it's craftsmanship. But there are some 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:23.920 other options as well that we can talk about. But 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:26.800 beyond that, Um, you know, we've talked about what was 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.520 made of we talked about how old it was. But yeah, 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.640 what what did this thing do? And at first it 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:35.040 was a real mystery. In fact, for like we said, 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.559 like a century, it was a mystery. We just didn't 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.280 have enough information to be able to determine. We had 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:44.600 some wild guests. There were people who made some good guesses, 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:47.199 but they didn't know the full extent yet. Um, and 0:10:47.280 --> 0:10:51.520 that they didn't realize initially how awesome this thing was. 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:53.720 You know, we can make an argument that this is 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:56.800 the oldest computer, which obviously means that it has to 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.080 do more than just have some inner work, inner working 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.480 gears that moves smoothly. It has to do something beyond that, 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:07.000 because otherwise anything that was reliant on gears and clockwork 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.160 you could call a computer. But we'll get into exactly 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.120 what it is that this thing did. That kind of 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.199 makes us consider it more of a computer device and 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:21.240 analog computer than some sort of interesting clockwork. Right. So, um, 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:24.679 but in general, what we understand it to have been 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:26.880 able to do, and in fact, we understand a lot 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.560 more about it in very recent years than we had 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.480 for the century leading up to it. Oh well, I'd 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.160 say now we've basically had a slam dunk in this one. 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.240 Recent recent revelations have shown us, Oh, this is pretty 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:41.719 much exactly what it is, Yeah, which is phenomenal when 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.120 you think of how badly and repair this thing was. 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:48.120 But but ultimately what it does is it's it's a 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:53.520 device that not only tracks celestial events and the movement 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:58.280 of celestial bodies in relation to our perspective here on Earth, 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.280 it also predicts them. So in other words, you not 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.720 only can you can you keep track of what's going on, 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:06.880 and it could give you an indication of where you 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:08.640 would need to look in the sky if you wanted 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:12.880 to see something like Mars. It also would tell you that, oh, 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.200 on this particular date, you will have a full solar eclipse. 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:19.880 It's kind of cool, yeah. In other words, an astronomical 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:23.640 calculatory UM. And so what it would do is it 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:28.200 would have a position of the Earth and then UM 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:31.960 by moving the hand crank, which which no longer exists, 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:34.520 but that's that's what figure. It was a hand crank 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:39.400 that that provided the the kinetic energy to make everything turn. 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.760 But by moving that you could see at the same time, 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.680 based on a projected date in the future, the positions 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:51.760 of the Sun of the Moon. UM probably of the 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.640 planets we don't know. The planet gears are missing, probably 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:57.960 at least the plants that the Greeks knew about, which 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:02.720 included the probably not the planet probably not the we 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.920 don't think, well, not Neptune Uranus or or if you 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.480 want to be kind, Pluto. Um. They they had identified 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.200 as far out as Saturn. Now, if in fact, we 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:16.080 were to find evidence that it included these other planets 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:17.640 as well, that, as far as we know, they didn't 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:20.320 know about, then that would make the third part of 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:23.120 our conversation to get a little more interesting. It also 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.760 had yeah, as you said, an eclipse prediction dial uh, 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:31.079 and that's really cool. Uh. And it also predicted cultural events. 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:35.000 So that's like the Olympiad, right, because you had a 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:37.480 schedule of when that would take place, and so by 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:41.240 plotting it against this device and actually inscribing it on 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.720 the device, you could, in a factor of the end, 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.360 you could see what the what the celestial events were 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.920 going to be at a planned future event that way, 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.680 which is kind of handy. Um. But we'll talk specifically. 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:54.440 We need to really get into the nitty gritty of 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:58.080 how this is possible, and then we'll conclude at the 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.880 end talking about how we know all of this stuff, because, 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.520 as you're gonna learn, it's really complicated to figure out 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:06.920 how a device works if you can't actually visualize all 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:09.720 the gears when you first get hold of it. Before 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:12.400 we get into that conversation, let's take a quick break 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.120 to thank our sponsor. So we've got a cool sponsor today, 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.880 Trunk Club. This is a really interesting service. 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You just do this 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:29.440 whenever you want to get some new awesome clothing. So 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.800 go to www dot trunk club dot com and check 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.480 it out. All right, we're back. So let's talk about 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.280 how this device actually tracked celestial events. Okay, so we 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.000 we know they're all these gears. There's a hand cranky turn. 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.360 It moves things forwards that you can look at what 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.760 the celestial conditions are on any given date, or you 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.720 can even advance it so that you can look for 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:55.800 a specific celestial event. Let's say you're looking specifically for 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.880 when is the next eclipse going to occur? So you're 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:02.520 not looking to see what the celestial scott what the 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:05.480 sky is going to look like, um three months from now, 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:07.040 You just want to know when the next eclipse is 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.160 you could advance the handle from your date and keep 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.720 doing it until you saw the eclipse information come up, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.080 and then compare that, see what the date is on 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:18.400 the other part of the indicator. And we'll talk about 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:20.680 all the different dials. This would be indicated by a dial, 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:23.200 so it's like it's like an analog clock face. You 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:25.640 would be spinning around a point to let you know 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.160 when this is coming exactly, and then you could say, oh, 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.000 all right, so the next eclipse is in you know, 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.520 you know, three months and two weeks from now or whatever. 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.000 And uh so there's a lot of different ways you 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:41.560 could use this. Well, um, there were about thirty thirty 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:46.160 one gears that we know of, probably at least more 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:48.920 or at least thirty, probably more. So it's i think 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.440 hypothesized that there were more to deal with the movement 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.600 of the planet that that's just lost. And you know, 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:56.600 it's not a surprise because again, like I said, when 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.560 we call it bad repair, I mean you're you think 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.280 about this. This is like essentially the imagine a clock 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:03.760 that's been fused into one piece. I mean an old 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.200 style gear clock fused into one piece. That's kind of 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.520 and it's it's opaque, so you can't see these gears 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:12.680 that are on the inside just with the naked eye. 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:15.159 But we'll get into how we figured more about this 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.520 in a little bit. But so you had all these 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:21.560 different dials that would mark different events, uh and different 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.159 time spans. Right, So you would have a dial that 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.600 would be set up for uh, for just regular keeping 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.639 of of a calendar year. But there were also dials 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:36.440 that were more attuned to specific celestial cycles. So for example, 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:40.320 there might be a nineteen year cycle that's represented by 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.159 one dial, another one had i I think a seventy 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.879 five year dial, And these dials were to refer to 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:50.520 things that patterns that would repeat once you hit those 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:53.840 time frames, so like every nineteen years, this one set 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.840 of pattern would repeat itself. So that's why they have 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:02.200 these different dials to indicate exactly what's happening at exactly 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:05.520 what time. UH. What I loved was the idea that 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:09.399 there was one gear specifically devoted to showing the phase 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:11.760 of the moon. So not only would you see the 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:15.320 position of the moon on any given date, but you 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:17.560 would also see what phase it was in, whether it 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.159 was waxing or waning, a new moon, full moon, whatever, 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.280 and and uh, I really thought that was very clever. 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:28.080 So yeah, you essentially either either refer to the dates 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.840 and look at the celestial events to compare the two, 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:33.680 or you had said it so that you would look 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.800 at a specific configuration of the celestial body and then 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:42.360 look at what date corresponded to it. It's um kind 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:48.560 of amazing to imagine the complex planning and craftsmanship that 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:52.639 went into a machine like this, because, um, when you 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.840 start thinking about it, Okay, say somebody set you down 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.320 and told you to try to build something like this, 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.800 and you had you know, it was in book test. 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:03.800 You knew what time frame all these celestial events would 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.000 occur in. How would you do it? Yeah, I mean God, 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.320 so you would have some kind of figure out the 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:15.280 relationships between the sizes of gears um and the way 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:21.320 they would interlock to create fractional relationships between of the 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.080 movements of all the different bodies at the same time. 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:26.520 And keep in mind that if this thing is reflecting 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.959 say planets and stuff like that, well, from a geocentric 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.480 point of view, the movement of the planets is not 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.480 just a simple circle. I mean you see them, they 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:41.600 persiss and then they go backwards and all of these 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:44.760 things exactly. So if you and there's a fellow named 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.080 Michael T. Wright who built a replica of this device, 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.320 and we'll talk more about him probably in a bit, 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.840 but he there's a great video that demonstrates him using 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:57.560 this machine to show the movement of these different elements 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:01.360 and sometimes you see them moving kind of backword compared 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.119 to other elements, and you think, wow, the gears have 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.280 to account for that too. The gears have to be 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:11.240 able to do very complex movements of these uh, these 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:13.800 these arms that are on these dials in order to 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:18.080 reflect what is really happening. And while the model itself 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.760 uh does depict a geocentric view of celestial bodies, we 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:26.240 can't be sure that the person who built it necessarily 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:31.560 ascribed necessarily ascribed to a geocentric philosophy. Oh, that's certainly true, 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:35.840 because for the devices function I mean it was, it 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:41.160 was functionally geocentric, right, because we're from exactly, even if 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:43.480 the person who made it actually thought the Earth went 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:45.960 around the Sun, it would still look the same pretty much. 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.800 Because if you're reflecting how the world, how the how 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:52.520 the celestial you know, elements look compared to being on 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.080 the Earth, it makes no sense to make it anything 0:20:55.080 --> 0:21:00.760 other than geocentric. So the heliocentric theories had been placed 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.880 ahead of when we think this device was made. So 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:07.920 it's possible we don't know because there were still people 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:12.600 who who's ascribed to a geocentric worldview. I that was dominant, Yeah, 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.120 because because it was similar to what we would see 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.320 centuries later, where to propose such a thing as a 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.840 helos helio centric view would mean that you might suffer 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.480 a little bit of let's say, you might get ostracized 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.200 with extreme prejudice. People didn't like here in that. Yeah, 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:32.800 So anyway, you know, it does look like it was 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.240 going to show you not only the Sun and Moon's movements, 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:38.880 which is already complex enough because they don't move at 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.119 the same you know rate or you know, they changed positions, 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:45.960 uh differently relative to one another. Uh. Then to throw 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.560 in the other planets makes that or the plants that 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:52.600 the Greeks knew about makes it even more complex. So 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.760 here's the question, does this count as a computer? I 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.119 would say absolutely. I would say so too, And I've 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:02.399 got a little argument here. Tell me what you think 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.720 about so um, I'd say the basic definition of a 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:09.040 computer a lot of times it's included that it's electronic. 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:11.720 But let's take that part out and say, well, whether 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.639 or not it's electronic. Um, a computer is like an 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.960 interactive machine that can and these words often come up, store, retrieve, 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.840 and process data. That's fair. Um, So it's like input, 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.480 output and processing and storage. Yeah. I always think of 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:31.560 it as something that can can take input, put it 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.719 through some form of algorithm, meaning a set of rules, 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:37.720 and then give you output on the other side. And 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:40.440