2000-year-old computer recreatedShow Video Details ↓ Narrator: This is a reconstruction of a two thousand year old computer. The original battered pieces were found in the shipwreck more than a century ago and Michael Wright, a museum curator from London, spent decades studying them in order to work out what the device was for. Michael Wright: This is my model of the antique [inaudible mechanism. The mechanism is a box full of gear wheels. Drive indications on dials. One on front and one at the back which we'll look at in a moment. And it's all driven by working from the hand knob here. On the front dial, we've got two scales. The inner ring is the zodiac divided into degrees. The outer ring is an annual calendar scale, three hundred sixty five days. Narrator: The device is a machine for predicting the motions of the heavens. When you turn the handle on the side, pointers move around the front dial showing the movements of the sun, moon and the five planets that the Greeks knew. The fastest point in here is the moon going around the sky once a month. Inside, a sophisticated setup of wheels riding around the other wheels models the varying models of the planets according to the Greek's astronomical theories. Michael Wright: Now look at the back. We've got two sets of... two displays together here. The upper one is basically a calendar. The spiral scale is divided into months, each of which is named. And this is a cycle of months. Two hundred and thirty five months which fit in to nineteen years. These are months measured by the moon. Narrator: An extensible pointer with a little needle on the edge tracks the spiral groove, just like a stylus on a record player. When it gets to the end you can lift the pointer up to reset it. One of the little dials just inside the spiral shows the dates of the ancient Greek games including the Olympics on a four year cycle, while the other tracks a much longer seventy six year cycle. Michael Wright: The lower display here is giving the times at which there may be eclipses. Again, it's granulated to months and the markings are just in those months in which we expect there to be an eclipse, either of the moon, or the sun, or both. And so at in mechanism you can see the gear trains that drive the pointer on the back dial. This shot also reveals that this model was made of recycled metal plates just like the original would have been. This is the first model of the antique [inaudible] mechanism to incorporate all of its known features. Thanks to Michael Wright, it's working again for the first time in two thousand years. [silence] … |