2000-year-old computer recreated

Video

Description:

The device was discovered more than a century ago by sponge divers from the Aegean island of Symi. It was a hand-wound clockwork device used to calculate the motions of the sun, moon and planets as seen from Earth, as well as to predict solar and lunar eclipses.
The complexity of the design, and the fact that it incorporated state-of-the-art astronomical knowledge, suggest that the maker cared a great deal about the accuracy of the mechanism.

Comments (6)

  1. Comment  by NDJS

    So… 2000 or more years ago, society figured out that our solar system was heliocentric, then later regressed to a geocentric model?

    • Comment  by Mak

      That’s the mystery… (supposedly)

    • Comment  by Anonymous

      That was before globalization… so a scientific discovery at that time could be limited to a small settlement/population, and not revealed to the whole world. “Whole world ” at the time was a junction of disclosure civilizations, many times not aware of foreign cultures.
      The “know world” is a Euro-centric concept. Who knows what civilizations might have been, over 2000 years ago which passed all knowledge and what they discovered?

  2. Comment  by blank

    They didn’t mention that it was a heliocentric device at all in the video. It simply measured movements and cycles of celestial objects that moved in the sky.

  3. Comment  by JImmy

    It wasn’t some big revelation that the sun was at the center of the Earth’s orbit. Any astronomer worth his salt in any era could have figured that out, and in fact many did. The layman believed the Earth to be at the center because the clergy told him thus, and the astronomers who knew differently wisely kept quiet.

    • Comment  by Fragacide

      Right… less they be burned on the stake, or whatever punishment was derivative to that era.

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Added: January 7th, 2009 at 7:15 pm

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