Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job and Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and a lot of all things tech, and it
Speaker 1: is time for a classic episode. This episode originally published
Speaker 1: on November two, thirteen, and it is titled the Oldest
Speaker 1: Computer Enjoy. So, Joe, why would you like to talk about? Well, um,
Speaker 1: on forward thinking, we usually talk about the future in
Speaker 1: or another and um so I wanted to go in
Speaker 1: completely the opposite direction and talk about the technology of
Speaker 1: the past. And I started thinking, I wonder, what's the
Speaker 1: oldest computer that we know about? Oh? I got you.
Speaker 1: So we're talking nine with any AC, right, that computer
Speaker 1: that you would end up programming with lots of plugs
Speaker 1: and switches, not at all? Wow? No? So wait are you?
Speaker 1: You're saying it's older than that? Older? Okay? Alright, well
Speaker 1: find how about the ninety two that's the Tennis soft
Speaker 1: Berry Computer or ABC, which was built at Iowa State
Speaker 1: College which now university. Obviously, but there was there was
Speaker 1: a patent dispute actually that was decided in the United
Speaker 1: States government about whether ENIAC 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 alright, so Conrad Zeus builds the Z three computer.
Speaker 1: And that was also the same year when the first
Speaker 1: bomba was built, you know, one of the devices meant
Speaker 1: to help decrypt German messages. That's it, right, No, alright.
Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty nine, George Stimmits completes the complex number calculator,
Speaker 1: the CNC at Bell Telephone Laboratories. We just finished talking
Speaker 1: about Bell Labs. This has got to be it. And
Speaker 1: even in the first demonstration he used teletype so that
Speaker 1: he could program this remotely over special telephone line. So
Speaker 1: it was the first remote computer as well. So that's it, right.
Speaker 1: I think you need to think less electricity fine, fine.
Speaker 1: Seven the analytical Engine. Charles Babbage, he designs this, never
Speaker 1: finishes it in his lifetime, but of course that is
Speaker 1: the device that Ada Lovelace, the Enchantress of Numbers, had
Speaker 1: possibly even created computer programs for algorithms, where she envisioned
Speaker 1: a time where you could encode things like music and
Speaker 1: poetry into mathematics. That's it, the analytical engine. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about that. You're you're about two tho
Speaker 1: years off, say what not about almost? Okay, so what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? I'm talking about something that is
Speaker 1: called the antique antique kith ant Oh, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: this problem the whole time. The anti cythera me yes,
Speaker 1: the anti cithera mechanism are also known as the antikathera mechanism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all depends on the or you know, which pronunciation
Speaker 1: you follow. Antikythera seems to be fairly commonplace. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and use that one and probably switch
Speaker 1: off without even thinking about it. All right, I know
Speaker 1: a little bit about this, but I guess before we
Speaker 1: talk about this mechanism, maybe we need to say what
Speaker 1: the heck is anti Cithera. For anyone who is not
Speaker 1: familiar with the the geography of Greece, you may not
Speaker 1: know this. This refers to a place. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: island in the Mediterranean Sea. And if you um, if
Speaker 1: you imagine you're looking at the Mediterranean, it's the small
Speaker 1: island that's between Crete to the south and the Peloponnesian
Speaker 1: Peninsula up to the north. So the mainland of Greece
Speaker 1: and it's right there in the middle. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: bigger island just called Cithera, and this is a smaller
Speaker 1: one offset from it called Anti cither So if Anti
Speaker 1: Cithera and O throw where to collide, it would just
Speaker 1: destroy one another. Yeah, total positronic REVERSI yeah, you tell
Speaker 1: them about the twinkie, so you know, joking aside, Does
Speaker 1: that mean that this is where that mechanism was was made? Um? No,
Speaker 1: probably not. This is where the mechanism was discovered. So
Speaker 1: I got its name, gotcha. So someone was walking around
Speaker 1: Antikithera one day and they stubbed their toe and oh
Speaker 1: what's this and found the world's oldest computer. No, it's
Speaker 1: much creepier. Um okay, So the story goes like this.
Speaker 1: Around the year nineteen hundred, there was a group of
Speaker 1: sponge divers who were off the coast of Antikithera and
Speaker 1: they were doing their diving. I guess whatever sponge divers do.
Speaker 1: They were gathering sponges, gathering sponges to wash all their
Speaker 1: dishes exactly. Um, so they were doing their thing. But
Speaker 1: apparently one of the divers came up to the surface
Speaker 1: and he was like, guys, there are dead women lying
Speaker 1: all over the bottom of the ocean. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of naked dead ladies at the bottom of the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds creepy, but studios. Yeah. Actually what he was seeing
Speaker 1: were statues. There were bronze and marble statues that were
Speaker 1: part of the payload of a almost well I guess
Speaker 1: about exactly to two year old ship wreck of a
Speaker 1: ship that was a Roman ship, a large Roman ship
Speaker 1: carrying a lot of cargo, much of it probably stolen
Speaker 1: or looted cargo. Right, we're talking at an era just
Speaker 1: around the time when the Romans were beginning to uh,
Speaker 1: let's say, incorporate the Hellenistic societies into their empire by force.
Speaker 1: So it had all these Greek artifacts on it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and luxury items, like really expensive stuff in the Greek world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is, we don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: the ship was doing. What we think it was probably
Speaker 1: a ship that was returning to Rome from some destination
Speaker 1: uh in the Greek world. Yeah, and so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of these Greek artifactsically currency, uh, they had,
Speaker 1: like you said, statues, they had lots of pottery, um,
Speaker 1: and they had this this device, which was well, at first,
Speaker 1: it was just a lump, right, yeah, right, yeah, first, Well,
Speaker 1: and of course it didn't get that much attention early
Speaker 1: on because there was so much other stuff down there
Speaker 1: in that shipwreck. Right, So the people who went in
Speaker 1: to really investigate the shipwreck and take a look and
Speaker 1: see what was going on, they didn't necessarily realize that
Speaker 1: there was something truly special, something that was beyond just
Speaker 1: uh special from an artistic merit point of view, but
Speaker 1: could tell us a lot about how much the ancient
Speaker 1: Greeks knew about craftsmanship, about astronomy, about math, all of
Speaker 1: these things we've become apparent, but only a hundred years later, right,
Speaker 1: so after the explorer. So so it it's it's forgotten
Speaker 1: for two thousand years essentially, and then for another hundred
Speaker 1: years we don't really know what it is. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of this lump of roded bronze inside what what
Speaker 1: used to be a wooden box essentially disintegrated. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's like there's one big remaining lump, but they're about
Speaker 1: eighty two fragments in total, right, right, So one of
Speaker 1: those fragments, the main fragment, has the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the what we know of as the inner workings of
Speaker 1: whatever this device was supposed to be. And we know
Speaker 1: a lot more about now, but don't want to ruin
Speaker 1: the surprise. No, But so basically we can say, like
Speaker 1: what it was made of. So what they think now is, Okay,
Speaker 1: this looks like it was some kind of collection of
Speaker 1: bronze gears inside of a wooden casing. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: at first they thought it might only be just one
Speaker 1: gear that somehow was loose from something else, and then
Speaker 1: they realized, no, there's actually several gears here, but it's
Speaker 1: all corroded together. Yeah, it's it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: fused into a big bottom of the ocean snotball, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's very accurate. Um. But so if you can imagine
Speaker 1: I would call like imagine a mid sized dictionary, not
Speaker 1: like a pocket dictionary, but also not that huge one
Speaker 1: from the library that you couldn't see. It's on a
Speaker 1: pedestalia like a like a large hardback dictionary. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's got a wooden casing, so you could open that
Speaker 1: casing up and then inside you've got this corroded mass
Speaker 1: that uh, that is all this gear formation. Now, of
Speaker 1: course the wooden casing doesn't really remain except in rotted
Speaker 1: fragmentary form um. But that's the basic mechanism we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: And if you start to look at it, you would
Speaker 1: see this one big gear um. But you might wonder
Speaker 1: what does this thing do? Yeah, and beyond that, I mean,
Speaker 1: before we even get to that, like how old is
Speaker 1: this thing? Oh? Yeah, because I mean we we figured
Speaker 1: that the shipwreck happens sometime around eight five BC before
Speaker 1: common eras because mostly because of the dates that we
Speaker 1: found and I say we, but the explorers found on
Speaker 1: the current. Yeah. You know, sometimes Joe and I we
Speaker 1: get we get tired of working on stuff or for thinking,
Speaker 1: we pop out to the Greek islands and then just
Speaker 1: go well skin diving. Yeah, you know. And X, by
Speaker 1: the way does mark the spot now, but we by
Speaker 1: dating things like the currency, they have sort of narrowed
Speaker 1: the ranged around five b C. But that that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that's how old the device is. No, they
Speaker 1: think that the device is older than the wreck. It
Speaker 1: wasn't built like right before that. It's generally dated between
Speaker 1: a hundred and a hundred and fifty b C. So
Speaker 1: it's thought of as a second century BC device, right,
Speaker 1: So so it is an ancient device. Uh, that seems
Speaker 1: to be about how old it is. Uh, we've got
Speaker 1: some ideas of where it may have come from. There
Speaker 1: were some, No, we don't we don't have any The
Speaker 1: instruction manual for this device was not anywhere to be found.
Speaker 1: It was not on the glove compartment of the shipwreck,
Speaker 1: so we can't be absolutely certain. Uh, there's some speculation
Speaker 1: that maybe it was the island of Rhodes, which was
Speaker 1: known for its scholar ship and also it's craftsmanship. But
Speaker 1: there are some other options as well that we can
Speaker 1: talk about. But beyond that, Um, you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: about what was made of, we talked about how old
Speaker 1: it was, but yeah, what what did this thing do?
Speaker 1: And at first it was a real mystery. In fact,
Speaker 1: for like we said, like a century, it was a mystery.
Speaker 1: We just didn't have enough information to be able to
Speaker 1: determine that. We had some wild guests. There were people
Speaker 1: who made some good guesses, but they didn't know the
Speaker 1: full extent yet. Um, and that they didn't realize initially
Speaker 1: how awesome this thing was. You know, we can make
Speaker 1: an argument that this is the oldest computer, which obviously
Speaker 1: means that it has to do more than just have
Speaker 1: some inner work, inner working gears that moved smoothly. It
Speaker 1: has to do something beyond that, because otherwise anything that
Speaker 1: was reliant on gears and clockwork you could call a computer.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into exactly what it is that this
Speaker 1: thing did. That kind of makes us consider it more
Speaker 1: of a computer device and analog computer than some sort
Speaker 1: of interesting clockwork. Right. So, um, but in general, what
Speaker 1: we understand it to have been able to do, and
Speaker 1: in fact we understand a lot more about it in
Speaker 1: very recent years than we had for the century leading
Speaker 1: up to it. Oh well, I'd say now we've basically
Speaker 1: had a slam dunk on this one. Recent recent revelations
Speaker 1: have shown us, oh, this is pretty much exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, which is phenomenal when you think of
Speaker 1: how badly and repair this thing was. But but ultimately
Speaker 1: what it does is it's it's a device that not
Speaker 1: only tracks celestial events and the movement of celestial bodies
Speaker 1: in relation to our perspective here on Earth, it also
Speaker 1: predicts them. So, in other words, you not only can
Speaker 1: you can you keep track of what's going on, and
Speaker 1: it could give you an indication of where you would
Speaker 1: need to look in the sky if you wanted to
Speaker 1: see something like marsh 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 ask
Speaker 1: atronomical calculator, yes, um. And so what it would do
Speaker 1: is it would have a position of the Earth and
Speaker 1: then um by moving the hand crank, which which no
Speaker 1: longer exists, but that's that's what figure. It was a
Speaker 1: hand crank that that provided the the kinetic energy to
Speaker 1: make everything turn by moving that you could see at
Speaker 1: the same time, based on a projected date in the future,
Speaker 1: the positions of the Sun, of the Moon, um, probably
Speaker 1: of the planets we don't know the planet gears are
Speaker 1: missing right now, probably at least the planets that the
Speaker 1: Greeks knew about, which included the probably not the planets
Speaker 1: that probably not the we don't think well, not Neptune
Speaker 1: Uranus or if you want to be kind, Pluto um.
Speaker 1: They they had identified as far out as Saturn. Now,
Speaker 1: if in fact we were to find evidence that it
Speaker 1: included these other planets as well as far as we
Speaker 1: know they didn't know about. Then that would the third
Speaker 1: part of our conversation to get a little more interesting.
Speaker 1: It also had yeah, as you said, an eclipse prediction
Speaker 1: dial uh and that's really cool. Uh. And it also
Speaker 1: predicted cultural events. Yeah, that's true, like the Olympiad, right,
Speaker 1: because you had a schedule of when that would take place,
Speaker 1: and so by plotting it against this device and actually
Speaker 1: inscribing it on the device, you could in a factor
Speaker 1: then you could see what the what the celestial events
Speaker 1: were 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
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Speaker 1: So let's talk about how this device actually tracked celestial events. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we we know they are all these gears. There's
Speaker 1: a hand cranky turn. It moves things forwards that you
Speaker 1: can look at what the celestial conditions are on any
Speaker 1: given date, or you can even advance it so that
Speaker 1: you can look for a specific celestial event. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're looking specifically for when is the next eclipse going
Speaker 1: to occur, So you're not looking to see what the
Speaker 1: celestial scott, what the sky is going to look like, um,
Speaker 1: three months from now, you just want to know when
Speaker 1: the next eclipse is. You could advance the handle from
Speaker 1: your date and keep doing it until you saw the
Speaker 1: eclipse information come up and then compare that see what
Speaker 1: the date is. On the other part of the indicator,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about all the different dial This would be
Speaker 1: indicated by a dial, so it's like it's like an
Speaker 1: analog clock face. You would be spinning around a point
Speaker 1: to let you know when this is coming exactly, and
Speaker 1: then you could say, oh, all right, so the next
Speaker 1: eclipse is in you know, you know, three months and
Speaker 1: two weeks from now or whatever. And uh so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways you could use this. Well, um,
Speaker 1: there were about thirty thirty one gears that we know of,
Speaker 1: probably at least at least more or at least thirty
Speaker 1: probably more. So it's I think hypothesized that there were
Speaker 1: more to deal with the movement of the planets that
Speaker 1: that's just lost. And you know, it's not a surprise
Speaker 1: because again, like I said, when we call it bad repair,
Speaker 1: I mean you're you think about this. This is like
Speaker 1: essentially the imagine a clock that's been fused into one piece.
Speaker 1: I mean an old style gear clock fused into one
Speaker 1: piece that's kind of and it's it's opaque, so you
Speaker 1: can't see these gears that are on the inside just
Speaker 1: with the naked eye. But we'll get into how we
Speaker 1: figured more about this in a little bit. But so
Speaker 1: you had all these different dials that would mark different events,
Speaker 1: uh and different time spans. Right, so you would have
Speaker 1: a dial that would be set up for for just
Speaker 1: regular keeping of of the calendar year, but there were
Speaker 1: also dials that were more attuned to specific celestial cycles.
Speaker 1: So for example, there might be a nineteen year cycle
Speaker 1: that's represented by one dial, another one had, I think
Speaker 1: a seventy five year dial, And these dials were to
Speaker 1: refer to things that patterns that would repeat once you
Speaker 1: hit those time frames, so like every nineteen years, this
Speaker 1: one set of pattern would repeat itself. So that's why
Speaker 1: they have these different dials to indicate exactly what's happening
Speaker 1: at exactly what time. Uh. What I loved was the
Speaker 1: idea that there was one gear specifically devoted to showing
Speaker 1: the phase of the moon, So not only would you
Speaker 1: see the position of the moon on any given date,
Speaker 1: but you would also see what phase it was in,
Speaker 1: whether it was waxing or waning, a new moon and
Speaker 1: fullman whatever, and and uh, I really thought that was
Speaker 1: very clever. So yeah, you essentially either either refer to
Speaker 1: the dates and look at the celestial events to compare
Speaker 1: the two, or you would said it so that you
Speaker 1: would look at a specific configuration of the celestial body
Speaker 1: and then look at what date corresponded to it. It's
Speaker 1: um kind of amazing to imagine the complex planning and
Speaker 1: craftsmanship that went into a machine like this, because, um,
Speaker 1: when you start thinking about it, okay, say somebody set
Speaker 1: you down and told you to try to build something
Speaker 1: like this, and you had you know, it was open
Speaker 1: book test. You knew what time frame all these celestial
Speaker 1: events would occur in. How would you do it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean God, so you would kind of figure out
Speaker 1: the relationships between the sizes of gears, um and the
Speaker 1: way they would interlock to create fractional relations ships between
Speaker 1: the 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, right, I mean you see them,
Speaker 1: they persiss and then they go backwards and all things exactly.
Speaker 1: So if you and there's a fellow named Michael T.
Speaker 1: Wright who built a replica of this device, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about him probably in a bit, but he
Speaker 1: there's a great video that demonstrates him using this machine
Speaker 1: to show the movement of these different elements. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you see them moving kind of backward compared to other elements,
Speaker 1: and you think, Wow, the gears have to account for
Speaker 1: that too. The gears have to be able to do
Speaker 1: very complex movements of these uh these these arms that
Speaker 1: are on these dials in order to reflect what is
Speaker 1: really happening. And while the model itself uh US depict
Speaker 1: a geocentric view of celestial bodies, we can't be sure
Speaker 1: that the person who built it necessarily ascribed necessarily ascribed
Speaker 1: to a geocentric philosophy. Oh, that's certainly true because for
Speaker 1: the device's function, I mean it was it was functionally geocentric, right,
Speaker 1: because we're preserving from exactly even if the person who
Speaker 1: made it actually thought the Earth went around the Sun,
Speaker 1: it would still look the same pretty much. Because if
Speaker 1: you're reflecting how the world, how the how the celestial
Speaker 1: you know, elements look compared to being on the Earth,
Speaker 1: it makes no sense to make it anything other than geocentric.
Speaker 1: So the heliocentric theories had been placed ahead of when
Speaker 1: we think this device was made. So it's possible we
Speaker 1: don't know because there were still people who who's ascribed
Speaker 1: to a geocentric worldview. I'd probably say 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 that 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 rate, or you know they change positions uh
Speaker 1: differently relative to one another, than to throw in the
Speaker 1: other planets makes that or the plants that the Greeks
Speaker 1: knew about makes it even more complex. It's Charity from
Speaker 1: twenty eight he's the oldest podcaster here to say we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break and hopefully when we
Speaker 1: come back it will be less cringe worthy. So here's
Speaker 1: the question, does this count as a computer? I would
Speaker 1: say absolutely. I would say so to you, 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 computer.
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's included that it's electronic, but
Speaker 1: let's take that part out and say, well, whether or
Speaker 1: not it's electronic. Um, a computer is like an interactive
Speaker 1: 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 all
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, the first
Speaker 1: person shooter game. Right. But obviously without electronics, this this
Speaker 1: ancient computer doesn't have software. It just has hardware. Or
Speaker 1: it's like thinking about a computer that can only run
Speaker 1: one program, which is not that difficult to imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you think of calculators as a subset
Speaker 1: of computers. Calculators like your basic calculator. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about your super crazy calculators that have apps on them
Speaker 1: and everything, but your basic calculator does basic calculator functions. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, again, taking that input, putting it through an algorithm,
Speaker 1: some sort of mathematical process, and you get an output
Speaker 1: similar to this device. Yeah. So this device, it's like
Speaker 1: a computer that only has one job. But within that job,
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely worth saying it's a computer because
Speaker 1: its stores data. So the relationships between in the astronomical
Speaker 1: pathways are represented by the mechanical math that's done between
Speaker 1: the teeth and the gears. So like the gear sizes
Speaker 1: themselves are sort of storing that data. Sure um. And
Speaker 1: then it takes input. You turn the hand crank to
Speaker 1: give it the input of the date you want to calculate,
Speaker 1: and then it gives you output. It's got the dials
Speaker 1: that reflect the computed values of the of what you're
Speaker 1: looking for. And even as I have said before, you
Speaker 1: could do it the other way where you keep turning
Speaker 1: the dial until you get the configuration you were interested in,
Speaker 1: and then you look at the date, so it works
Speaker 1: in either sense, and uh, pretty phenomenal. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: when you think about how precise you have to be
Speaker 1: to make sure you get this and only that, but
Speaker 1: just the huge amount of information you have to have
Speaker 1: at your disposal to even start in the craftsmanship of
Speaker 1: this thing. Because the Greeks had a lot of of
Speaker 1: information about astronomy, some of it they got from the Babylonians.
Speaker 1: So the Babylonians were known as is very much interested
Speaker 1: in astronomy. The Greeks were as well, and so they
Speaker 1: had to have had all this observation data that they had,
Speaker 1: the things that they had observed about the movement of
Speaker 1: celestial objects in the sky and how those patterns would
Speaker 1: arise in order for them to plan that out into
Speaker 1: a mechanical device. And that to me is really amazing
Speaker 1: because you're not talking about, oh, you know, every four weeks,
Speaker 1: this one event happens. Now, some of these cycles, like
Speaker 1: I said, are incredibly long. You had a nineteen year cycle,
Speaker 1: you had a seventy six year cycle, you had a
Speaker 1: fifty four year cycle. All of these were taken into
Speaker 1: account 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, not to mention the
Speaker 1: movement of the other planets. That's a lot of information
Speaker 1: that you have to have compiled before you ever cut
Speaker 1: into a sheet of bronze. Uh. Yes, it certainly is.
Speaker 1: And and even harder is imagining how you would begin
Speaker 1: 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, right, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have evidence. This is the earliest existing device.
Speaker 1: In fact, we don't have any other devices to point to.
Speaker 1: And let's be clear when we're calling it the earliest
Speaker 1: known computer that that doesn't mean we think that there's
Speaker 1: nothing that like this that could have come before. It
Speaker 1: just means the it's the earliest one that we have
Speaker 1: so and we don't have any others. It's not like
Speaker 1: there are you know, twenty other examples of this. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you want to look at for another object that's
Speaker 1: as complex as this one, you have to go about
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred years further into the early Renaissance and look
Speaker 1: at the Middle East, China, and Europe for devices that
Speaker 1: start to equal this level of complexity. Yet, however, these
Speaker 1: historians of mechanical engineering, they say, this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't show up until late medieval clockwork. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: 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 that 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 No,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence of that in this device, which suggests
Speaker 1: that whoever built it had done it at least a
Speaker 1: few times before to perfect the whole process. Before building
Speaker 1: another one. Yeah, and combined with the fact that this
Speaker 1: thing is just so smart that it suggests it was
Speaker 1: probably not the only one of its kind. It probably
Speaker 1: came from a line of similar devices, maybe of advancing complexity.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, if this is the case,
Speaker 1: where the heck is everything else and well, some of
Speaker 1: it could just be lost or destroyed. And also being
Speaker 1: made up of bronze means that it's a valuable resource
Speaker 1: which occasionally for other purposes, like I don't know, war,
Speaker 1: you would melt down so that you could use it
Speaker 1: for other stuff. Yeah, I mean, think about what we're
Speaker 1: talking about the first and second century b C. In
Speaker 1: the Hellenistic world. I mean, it's it's a time when
Speaker 1: stuff might have gotten grabbed and taken to another place,
Speaker 1: melted down, or just lost, just like just like this
Speaker 1: one was lost. There's lots stuff going on if you
Speaker 1: look at and we should mention this stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in History Class Sister podcast they did an episode on
Speaker 1: this same topic. Fantastic episode, highly committed, you should definitely
Speaker 1: go listen to it. Um. But one of the things
Speaker 1: they pointed out was that if you look at bronze
Speaker 1: statues from that era, they're very very few of them,
Speaker 1: and I think like nine out of ten came from
Speaker 1: shipwrecks because the ones that were left on land, more
Speaker 1: frequently than not had been melted down for other purposes.
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those There was not necessarily
Speaker 1: a sense of permanency in this time of the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we don't have, like, in terms of archaeology, another
Speaker 1: device like this from the time. Has anybody ever described
Speaker 1: a device like this from the time? Uh, that's a
Speaker 1: good question. Do you have any actual information on that?
Speaker 1: Because when I was looking for it, that was it
Speaker 1: seemed to me at the time that everyone was absolutely
Speaker 1: shocked by this device because it didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: any kind of shock shocked to the point where they
Speaker 1: were wondering if it was perhaps a hoax, that maybe
Speaker 1: someone had planted this thing and it was a fake.
Speaker 1: But it may be that there are sources I'm I'm
Speaker 1: aware of. Do you know any I think there are
Speaker 1: ancient descriptions of ore ries. Okay, so those are wouldn't
Speaker 1: be exactly like this, but sort of ancient models of
Speaker 1: the movement of the Planet's interesting. So yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course we do know that there were philosophers who had
Speaker 1: described uh, the very motions that this device enacted that
Speaker 1: you know they were they were just describing it for
Speaker 1: scholarly purposes, and this device would show that in action
Speaker 1: if you were to move the handle. Well, here's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. Who built this thing? Yeah? Where did it
Speaker 1: come from? We don't. We don't know, is the short answer.
Speaker 1: We have some suspicions. Uh. Sometimes the name Archimedes gets
Speaker 1: thrown around there. Yeah, so one clue is just that
Speaker 1: Archimedes he was around, you know, a century before this,
Speaker 1: and he was a genius inventor and uh or at
Speaker 1: least we assume, so some of his inventions we cannot
Speaker 1: actually be certain we're ever built. But sure, come on,
Speaker 1: he built a death ray just just in mind, death ray, okay,
Speaker 1: probably and a giant a giant arm that would upset
Speaker 1: besieging ships. I'd 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 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 commedee 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: I think to twelve BC and the device was made
Speaker 1: in the probably sometime between, right, 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 per presented saying that they were very
Speaker 1: much on that island, there was a scholarly center that
Speaker 1: was devoted to astronomy, and that they also had craftsmen
Speaker 1: who worked in clockwork type devices. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: it could have originated from that area. We just we
Speaker 1: don't know. There's some clues there, but we we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. Yeah. Another name I just want to
Speaker 1: mention real quick that gets brought up is Hipparcos. Hipparcos
Speaker 1: Hippocaus of of Nicia. And he was a Greek astronomer
Speaker 1: um and geographer and he did the maths. He was
Speaker 1: a smart guy trigonometry right, yeah, he he was also
Speaker 1: uh he wasn't Hippocrates, but anyway, he he He also
Speaker 1: was known for describing the movements of the sun in
Speaker 1: the moon, right and uh. And some indications that it
Speaker 1: maybe could have had something to do with him, or
Speaker 1: that the astronomical theories that are reflected in this, including
Speaker 1: like the movement of the moon reflects his thoughts about
Speaker 1: the movement, So it may not be that he had
Speaker 1: a direct hand in it, but that perhaps a student
Speaker 1: or someone familiar with his work took the theory and
Speaker 1: put it into a physical object. Okay, but I have
Speaker 1: another theory about who created it. Yeah, I have a feeling.
Speaker 1: I know what you're gonna say. But hit me with it, buddy. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: it goes like this, This mechanism is way too advanced
Speaker 1: to have been built by human beings at the time.
Speaker 1: Obviously it was built by a aliens be time traveler
Speaker 1: see transdimensional reptilians. Right, so um or or sorry d um,
Speaker 1: like a super advanced secret human society that we don't
Speaker 1: know about, like Atlantis, but we do know about them,
Speaker 1: we don't think they exist, all right. So all right,
Speaker 1: and Joe, I know you're you're presenting this as a
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek because you and I share a common
Speaker 1: opinion on this about how it's absolutely ridiculous nonsense to
Speaker 1: assume this. Yeah, for one thing, it it really it
Speaker 1: really says a lot about the cynicism of people when
Speaker 1: it comes to the creativity of human beings and ingenuity
Speaker 1: and our ability to process complex thoughts and bring them
Speaker 1: into reality, you know. I mean it's the same argument
Speaker 1: that no, the Pyramids, no human could have built those.
Speaker 1: Actually thousands of humans built those. Tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: humans built those. Yeah, it's um, it's not like somebody
Speaker 1: in ancient Greece building a warp drive, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: somebody who was building something that was totally available to
Speaker 1: someone with the technology of the time. All they had
Speaker 1: to be was really really smart, right. Yeah. That we
Speaker 1: know that the astronomical knowledge was there, you know, the
Speaker 1: scholarship was there. We know that the bronze working was there.
Speaker 1: We know that people there were craftsmen who generally wasn't
Speaker 1: as good as this, right, but there were craftsmen who
Speaker 1: could create incredible bowl works. A lot of bronze U Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of those that haven't survived because of again
Speaker 1: the fact that people would melt stuff down. But the
Speaker 1: ones that have survived have shown that there's you know,
Speaker 1: 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 the alien slash time travel or 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, might be electronic or something. Also, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be geocentric. Really 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 they just
Speaker 1: thought those were those were not really high up on
Speaker 1: the list. Yeah, you don't wanna, you don't want to
Speaker 1: visit those? Yeah, So I think we can discount the
Speaker 1: whole alien hypothesis. Hey, it's Jonathan from I kicked out
Speaker 1: the old man who was talking into my microphone. We're
Speaker 1: going to take another quick break, but we'll be right
Speaker 1: back alright. So we have discussed what it was, we
Speaker 1: discussed how it worked. How do we know that it
Speaker 1: did this thing? I mean, you are you're talking about
Speaker 1: a giant hunk of corroded bronze. How could you possibly
Speaker 1: ever figure out what this thing actually did? As we
Speaker 1: already mentioned, people originally did not know. They had no
Speaker 1: idea what this honk was capable of. For a century,
Speaker 1: we really didn't know. We had some people make some
Speaker 1: guesses occasionally, but for the most part, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: we were able to use something far more sophisticated than
Speaker 1: just our own eyeballs to look at it. We had
Speaker 1: to use X rays, and with the X rays, initially,
Speaker 1: the X rays showed that there were lots of gears
Speaker 1: inside this hunk of corroded bronze, and that they were
Speaker 1: connected in some way. But those early X rays were
Speaker 1: not perfect. Mostly they due to the fact that you
Speaker 1: couldn't tell depth with it, so you couldn't see how
Speaker 1: the gears were connected. It was like a massive gears,
Speaker 1: but you weren't sure where where they were in relation
Speaker 1: to one another. Um But enter something called three D
Speaker 1: X ray. Yeah, where you start tomography, Yes, 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 Runner? No?
Speaker 1: 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, well, this thing is amazing. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: the the various X ray devices we use showed more
Speaker 1: of the relation of all these different gears, so we
Speaker 1: got to see how they were laid out inside this
Speaker 1: hunk of corroded bronze. But the blade Runner device, all right,
Speaker 1: So it was an X ray machine that was designed
Speaker 1: to look for tiny cracks and turbine blades. That's what
Speaker 1: the original design of these machines was for and to
Speaker 1: tell whether or not you're a replicant. Also to tell yeah,
Speaker 1: I would ask you if a turtle is on its back,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Why doesn't mechanism turn the turtle over? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, it would look for these tiny It was
Speaker 1: designed so that you could detect the tiniest of cracks
Speaker 1: and turbine blades, so that you could do maintenance before
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure. They used it to look at this device,
Speaker 1: the anti anti cithera device. We keep avoiding saying it
Speaker 1: so that I don't fall over myself. Let's say it
Speaker 1: three times together, Jonathan, Okay, so that's fantastic, all right,
Speaker 1: Now you have to say it backwards. No. Um. So
Speaker 1: the Antikithera device, the blade Runner thing, it looks at it,
Speaker 1: and it actually is able to see because it has
Speaker 1: such precise measurements. It's able to to to distinguish what
Speaker 1: the tiny shallow carvings are on those dials. That's how
Speaker 1: we were able to read the word inscription. The inscriptions, yeah,
Speaker 1: because some of them were just very faded already, even
Speaker 1: before you talk about the corrosion effort in there or
Speaker 1: element in there, i should say. And the blade Runner
Speaker 1: X rays were able to measure these very tiny changes
Speaker 1: in the surface of these different dials, and that's how
Speaker 1: we were able to see what the writing was and
Speaker 1: thus able to really um translated and figure out what
Speaker 1: this thing actually did. And that's how people once they
Speaker 1: started reading it, once they started being able to read
Speaker 1: the writing, it became clear that this was a far
Speaker 1: more sophisticated to vice than what what predecessors were thinking.
Speaker 1: Even the earliest guesses were things that probably can predict
Speaker 1: solar and lunar movements, or maybe it's some form of calendar,
Speaker 1: but it No one was really aware of how sophisticated
Speaker 1: it was until we were able to take this closer look.
Speaker 1: And I think it's pretty phenomenal what we've learned about
Speaker 1: it so far, Like those shallow engravings have told us
Speaker 1: pretty much everything we need to know about its basic function,
Speaker 1: and that's how we're able to draw some conclusions and
Speaker 1: clear the conclusions that lad Michael t right to build
Speaker 1: his replica of the device to the point where he's
Speaker 1: got a working replica. Uh it, as far as we
Speaker 1: can tell, it's as accurate to the original as we
Speaker 1: can possibly get. Yeah, you should look this up on
Speaker 1: YouTube and see it, because it's not just a model.
Speaker 1: It is a working replica. He built the machine. He
Speaker 1: used very similar methods as to what the ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: would have. He used the same sort of dimension of gears. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, keeping in mind that we don't he's working
Speaker 1: from an incomplete model. Even with our very very sophisticated
Speaker 1: techniques these days, you can't see what's not there, right,
Speaker 1: there's still some missing pieces that we don't really have.
Speaker 1: You know, he was able to recreate it based upon
Speaker 1: what we think the device was meant to do and
Speaker 1: his works and then the videos are amazing. When you
Speaker 1: watch the just the minute movements of each of these
Speaker 1: pieces in relation to one another and think of how
Speaker 1: complex this is, it's mind blowing. It's well, and it's
Speaker 1: also it's a it's a gorgeous device, you know, It's
Speaker 1: just it's a beautiful device. You would look at and
Speaker 1: you might think Originally, if you were just to glance
Speaker 1: at it, you might think it was either a really
Speaker 1: weird clock or maybe some sort of navigational equipment for
Speaker 1: like a ship or something, just because you've got bronze
Speaker 1: and wood there. But um, yeah, once you get a
Speaker 1: deeper understanding of what it is, it's pretty pretty nifty.
Speaker 1: I think the replica was made with brass instead of product.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it was brass instead
Speaker 1: of bronze. So yeah, even more ship like then with
Speaker 1: the brass and would combination. Yeah. There's recent scholarship going
Speaker 1: on with a project called the Anti Kit through a
Speaker 1: mechanism research project that's a collaborative project between lots of
Speaker 1: different research organizations and individuals. Yeah, there's a mathematician named
Speaker 1: Tony Freethe and UH he's been using imaging technology to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of questions that remain about the mechanism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They the group, the research group was founded in two
Speaker 1: thousand five and has been extremely active. They have sponsored
Speaker 1: several museum exhibitions throughout the world. I think right now
Speaker 1: as the record of this podcast, at least some of
Speaker 1: the device is on display in UH in a museum
Speaker 1: in Athens, but I believe that ends in January. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the it's an exhibition and called the Antikittheras Shipwreck,
Speaker 1: the ship the Treasures and the mechanism, and it's at
Speaker 1: the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. YEA. And so
Speaker 1: that of course has more than than the device itself.
Speaker 1: It also has examples of the other stuff that was
Speaker 1: found in that shipwreck, which, by the way, people have
Speaker 1: gone back to that shipwreck and found more things around
Speaker 1: it since that initial discovery. UM. And so there's there's
Speaker 1: also been a lot of symposia that they've held. They've
Speaker 1: had a lot of gatherings where they they combine research
Speaker 1: and they published that research. There's lots of information on
Speaker 1: their website about the device and the circumstances around its
Speaker 1: discovery and just the process of discovery as we used
Speaker 1: more and more sophisticated techniques to examine it. And it's
Speaker 1: really a great resource. I highly recommend visiting that website.
Speaker 1: I'll link to that on our Facebook page and Twitter
Speaker 1: handle so you guys can see it, because it's pretty
Speaker 1: neat stuff. I mean, it's um, you know. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed reading about the process they went through as they
Speaker 1: would learn more and more, and of course that hasn't finished.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's there's one thing, one question besides who
Speaker 1: built it that we don't know the answer to yet,
Speaker 1: which is why did they build it? Like? Why is it?
Speaker 1: Was it? What? What was the in purpose? Was it
Speaker 1: a scholarly tool? Was it so that they could uh create,
Speaker 1: you know, specifically plan out events to coincide with celestial events,
Speaker 1: so that perhaps it was a political tool. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe if if an eclipse is seen as a bad omen,
Speaker 1: you may want to avoid planning some big event around
Speaker 1: an eclipse just so that people don't think that the
Speaker 1: event itself is cursed. I mean it's I'm sure in
Speaker 1: the ancient world you could probably get some amount of
Speaker 1: power just by being able to accurately predict eclipses. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's another possibility. It could just be religious power
Speaker 1: or political power. We don't know, And it's possible that
Speaker 1: as much as we can learn about this device, maybe
Speaker 1: we never really figure out with any degree of certainty
Speaker 1: who built it or why it was built. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'd be amazed if we ever are able to figure
Speaker 1: out who built it. That would be phenomenal to me.
Speaker 1: Unless someone's like, oh, look here there's an inscription on
Speaker 1: the bottom, Johan from Sweden. What that would That would
Speaker 1: be a big upset, But not that I think that
Speaker 1: would ever happen. But yeah, I mean it was I
Speaker 1: want to float. Another possibility steampunks, all right, so steampunk
Speaker 1: cost players. Yeah, but I'm thinking that it was a
Speaker 1: steampunk convention. A certain doctor showed up at it, accidentally
Speaker 1: ended up grabbing this device, and on a further adventure,
Speaker 1: maybe three episodes down the line, ended up accidentally dunking
Speaker 1: it into the ocean off the coast degrease. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. Um, explains everything. Uh, did you see the
Speaker 1: the lego really cool? Now, this wasn't We probably might
Speaker 1: not want to call it a replica because it's not
Speaker 1: trying to copy the form of the original, just the function, right,
Speaker 1: And even the function it was I think a limited
Speaker 1: part of it because it was really showing things like
Speaker 1: eclipses in the uh in the the lego version, I
Speaker 1: don't think it necessarily showed all the movements that the
Speaker 1: Antikitthera device showed, because I was when I watched the
Speaker 1: videos that this is really clever because it would show
Speaker 1: you the the date and uh when the next eclipse
Speaker 1: would occur, whether it was solar or Luna or both.
Speaker 1: But it didn't um both as in like a region
Speaker 1: of time when both would occur, not both occurring at
Speaker 1: the same time. UM necessarily, But the the it didn't
Speaker 1: tell you things. It didn't tell you things like the
Speaker 1: movement of the planets as far as I could tell.
Speaker 1: So it was it had a limited set of functions
Speaker 1: that the Antikithera device actually did. But it was still
Speaker 1: really cool to watch. It was really cool. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you, I'm going to invented device and it's gonna
Speaker 1: tell you it'll predict when the sun passes in front
Speaker 1: of the moon that will be a bad day. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make sure I stay indoors that day. What does
Speaker 1: that call that's called like A? I think that's I
Speaker 1: think that's called well, it doesn't really matter because we're No.
Speaker 1: That's essentially called boy. It's sure as vaporized outside today,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Ah? Yeah, No, that would not not go
Speaker 1: over well. And that wraps up this classic episode about
Speaker 1: the oldest computer. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics or perhaps requests that
Speaker 1: I never ever do an old man voice ever again,
Speaker 1: which is legit, you can reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle is text stuff H s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.