Clickspring – Recreating the ancient engineering that built the Antikythera Mechanism
An evening pause: For background, the Antikythera Mechanism is an archaeological artifact from ancient Greece:
The Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known scientific computer, built in Greece at around 100 BCE. Lost for 2000 years, it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901. But not until a century later was its purpose understood: an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision.
Today’s pause shows how this very complex mechanism, that includes many metal gears, might have been made by hand, without electricity and our modern tools.
Hat tip Cotour.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
An evening pause: For background, the Antikythera Mechanism is an archaeological artifact from ancient Greece:
The Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known scientific computer, built in Greece at around 100 BCE. Lost for 2000 years, it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901. But not until a century later was its purpose understood: an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision.
Today’s pause shows how this very complex mechanism, that includes many metal gears, might have been made by hand, without electricity and our modern tools.
Hat tip Cotour.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Always been fascinated by the discovery of tbis device.
Yes. Those old Greeks came a lot closer to having kicked off a genuine Industrial Revolution two millennia before the Brits than we typically give them credit for. Had that happened, we might well have had interstellar colonies by now.
Dick Eagleson wrote: “Those old Greeks came a lot closer to having kicked off a genuine Industrial Revolution two millennia before the Brits than we typically give them credit for. Had that happened, we might well have had interstellar colonies by now.”
I agree. I blame Aristotle for thinking that we are so smart that we can deduce the secrets of nature rather than thinking the way that made Galileo Galilei the father of modern science. Aristotle’s hypotheses were too often treated as laws of nature. This is a pet peeve of mine, as though there is something we could do about it now. We humans may be smart, but we have our limitations, and experimentation allows us to confirm or reject our hypotheses. Aristotle made some forward motion, but his form of science led us astray in so many important areas. Galileo fixed that with the invention of the confirmation of the hypothesis, which allows for workable theories.
So, yes. We lost two thousand years of progress, because hubris made us think we are smarter than nature. We have not really learned that lesson, though. Even at the time of the Titanic, people still thought that we were more powerful than nature. Even today, there are those who are convinced that it is our carbon dioxide that warms the planet (e.g. Aristotelean thinker, Gretta Thunburg), despite the warming that happened before our extensive release, despite the cooling that happened a century ago just as we started to really release, despite the “pause” of the past three decades, and despite the continuous climate changes that have happened throughout the history of the planet. We humans still suffer from the Aristotelean thinking that we are the masters of the universe, with the power to control nature’s climate.
We will get to those interstellar colonies (as in the 2016 movie Passengers), but it will be by using the Italian scientific method, not the Greek method.
The British were able to create the Industrial Revolution because of their Agricultural Revolution. Despite laws requiring alternating fallow fields (repealed only a century ago), some British farmers began crop rotation back around the tenth century AD, where one crop prepared the field for the next crop (e.g. wheat, oats, and barley), which allowed for far more food production, which allowed for fewer farmers and more alternate forms of work, including science and technology (and military, and missionary, and Shakespeare, and cetera, and eventually lots of factory workers). Would the Greeks have invented crop rotation fifteen hundred years before the British? Or perhaps they would have invented artificial fertilizers first.
Meanwhile, I like the simplicity of the lathe in the video. I like the power of the modern industrial lathe a little more, however.
Aristotle was the first natural philosopher to scientifically demonstrate—as opposed to philosophically speculating about—the Earth’s spherical shape. He began with his usual logical arguments (which one might note have not held up well over time)—but then, almost as an afterthought, turns to additional empirical arguments for same—which notably are just as valid today as when he wrote during the 4th century B.C. some 2-1/3 millennia ago.
Aristotle also basically forecast Columbus’ voyage(s) nearly two millennia before the latter took that prediction to heart.
Another lovely mechanism:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AOXqCuqDOiI&pp=ygUabWVjaHlzaWx2ZXIgc3dhbiBhdXRvbWF0b24%3D
Here, a mechanical CVT is demonstrated:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzdOSxIejfo
That and Grand Illusions are favorites of mine.
Equally important to the planet positions, it calculated the timing of various Olympic games.
Well, equally important to the makers, at least.
A century or so before Aristotle, Pythagorus (of the Pythagorean Theorem) noted that the circular shadow of the Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse suggested that the Earth is a circular shape. He also noted that the sails of ships are the first to appear on the horizon, then the hulls appear, suggesting a spherical shape, which is consistent with the circular shape.
A century after Aristotle, Eratosthenes calculated the Earth’s curvature by measuring shadows in different locations. He could have calculated the curvature or he could have calculate the distance of the Sun from the Earth. He chose the curvature model.
I would say that it was Galileo who turned natural philosophy into science, with the beginnings of a scientific method. Form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, conclude a theory that the hypothesis is right or wrong.