Antikythera machine, the first computer of humanity?

The first computer in the world, dates back more than 2000 years, was not used by the Greeks as an astronomical instrument to chart the movement of the Sun, Moon and Planets only, but was also a predictor of their future destinies, researchers found in an exciting new study.

The first computer in the world

Is a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator called the Antiquitha Mechanism, a system of complex bronze gears dating back to around 60 BC, used by the Greeks to track the eclipse of the sun and the lunar eclipse.

The machine was recovered from the wreckage of a ship discovered off a Greek island called Antekythira in 1901, but a long study, lasting for decades, now only announced new results for the machine.While researchers have previously focused their efforts on internal mechanisms, the study is now trying to decipher the delicate inscriptions on the remaining parts of their outer surfaces.

What is certain about the machine is that it is a planetary display mechanism, and it shows the location of the sun and the moon in the sky, said Mike Edmonds, a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in Wales, part of the research project team. But in order to produce a mirror of the sky, the engineers of this alien machine offered less desire, for purely science, there is a constant curiosity for these men, about what the future holds.

Edmunds, who worked on the project for about 12 years, said the deciphering of the inscriptions highlighted something interesting, the "next eclipsed color". "We are not quite sure how to explain this, to be fair, but this can turn us back to previous suggestions that the color of the eclipse was a kind of forerunner," Edmonds said during a scientific presentation in Athens. The signal, some colors may bear signs, indicate a better future, unlike other colors ».

This means that these ancient Greek engineers used a complex machine to predict the color of the next solar or lunar eclipse, giving them signs and signals of good or bad things that might occur in the future.Edmonds added that if this is the case, though our interpretation of this is true: "This is our first example, with regard to the mechanism of any real mention of Astrology, instead of astronomy," he said, It is clear that the main goal of the computer was astronomical, that is, astronomy, not astrology.

The computer-based texts were supposed to exist as a guide, to help the user understand all the different points and aspects, which would teach him about the universe in which he lives, and also about how he lives, through the cycles of time associated with his life, according to According to Alexander Jones, a professor of history at the Institute for the Study of the Old World in New York.

Computer as imagined by scientists

Unique device

The researchers say the computer may have been produced on Rhodes Island, but they do not think it is a "unique" device, in the usual sense, that they believe it is unique in the sense of "the only one found," but believe other similar devices, Find it after.

The slight differences in engravings on this computer indicate that at least two people participated in its manufacture, and others are likely to be involved in its manufacture as well, and the production of its metal gears. At this point Edmunds points out that the computer may be manufactured into a small manufacturing workshop, rather than one person alone.

An antiquity machine, now described as the first analog computer in the world, dates back more than 2,000 years, and was discovered in 1901, in the wreckage of a ship sinking off the Greek island of the same name. There are more than 12 pieces of classical literature, spanning from about 300 BC to 500 AD, all of which point to the presence of this type of instrument, similar to Antiquity.

It is also a calculator that can combine, multiply, divide and subtract. It is also capable of matching several lunar months with years, as well as displaying the location of the sun and the moon in the zodiac.History professor Alexander Jones said the computer had some drawbacks, but nevertheless achieved a clear snapshot of astronomical knowledge, simple at the time.

"If you look at the sky, you'll see the basic body of what the device was offering, roughly what it really is, but it was not very accurate." It is not clear what happened to this technology, to make it disappear, and its mechanical complexity was not seen until at least a thousand years ago, until the advent of medieval times, in European cathedrals.

Part of the machine detected

Astronomy in the Greeks

Astronomy began in the Greeks almost 600 BC, when Greek scientists and philosophers developed a number of astronomical ideas, such as the famous scientist Pythagoras, one of the most prominent scientists of the 6th century BC, of ​​the earth as spherical, as well as his attempts to explain the nature of the universe As a whole, to develop one of the oldest cosmic systems.

In 370 BC, the world of Eudoxus of Kneedos designed a mechanical system to explain the motion of the planets. He said that the planets, the sun, the moon and the stars revolve around the earth. In the fourth century BC, the world Aristotle introduced the theory of the centrality of the earth, in its philosophical system.

In the same century, Iraquelides of Ponts suggested that the outward movement of celestial bodies, in the west, is in fact the rotation of the Earth around its axis, in the direction of the East. I also think that Mercury and Venus revolve around the Sun and not the Earth, to come in the third century BC, the world of Aristocus of Samos. He says that the rotation of planets, including Earth, is around the Sun, and that the earth is also revolving around its axis. Although Heraclides and Aristarchus were earlier than their time, their ideas could not occupy the central theoretical space of the earth, which was firmly entrenched in time.