Oh, I remember reading about his find in an old (1970s or 1960s) issue of Russian pop sci journal Наука и Жизнь (Science and Life; apologies if the unicode did not work).
I think one lesson here is that when the society does not value technology, technology suffers. It does not evolve on its own but needs encouragement and support. Just having smart people is not enough.
I sometimes wonder what our life would have been had our ancestors started focusing on science and technology earlier, like if the scientific revolution had occurred several centuries before it did. We could have been much, much farther advanced -- or we could be living in a new stone age, I do not know.
I remember something Carl Sagan said...something along the lines (paraphrased) that the scholars at Alexandria questioned the movement of the stars but not of social conventions like slavery. The machines they made were made for the amusement of kings or for weapons but not for easing the burden of work or increasing comfort for the common man. So when the mobs came to burn the place down no one was there to stop them.
Seems like something very self-serving for a modern to say, to claim that the ancient civilizations crumbled because they didn't follow our values.
I wonder if we have seen the last collapse of civilization? Will our descendants marvel at the wonders left in our remains and chalk our decline up to our own moral failing? Will they condemn us for not following their doctrines?
"Such wonders these people made! But they were never willing to question their gods of democracy. Even as their technology grew more awe-inspiring, their governments grew more insane and profligate, until the whole structure collapsed. What mighty and foolish people!"
I doubt anyone will be agog at concepts as mushy as 'democracy'. Few people read history and exclaim 'feudalism? who ordered that?'. We tend to be surprised at technological advances that somehow failed to be exploited despite their, in retrospect, obvious value. The first inventions of things like gunpowder, movable type and apparently mechanical gears fall under that category. By that token, future-people are might stare at us in disbelief of the less-than-optimal use we made of, say, packet-switched networks or the radio spectrum.
So when the mobs came to burn the place down no one was there to stop them.
Hmm.. there were no mobs involved, the first destruction is attributed to Caesar at around 48BC.
I appears that the library was then rebuild and destroyed again in 648AD
... Burning and destruction of the Library of Alexandria was reported to be the first act of sacking after Amr ibn al 'Aas forces entered the city. It was also said that the Library's collection was still substantial enough at this late date to provide six months' worth of fuel for the baths. From (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria)
According to the Wikipedia article on the library of Alexandria, Carl Sagan was basically full of shit. (I'm assuming you're talking about the last episode of Cosmos.)
According to the wikipedia article the above out-of-context and possibly misremembered quote is full of shit.
Without having a transcript of that particular cosmos episode I would not go so far as to say Sagan was full of shit. Do you have it ? Is that a literal quote ?
I believe he was referring to the Christians dragging the female mathematician Hypatia to her death, which is sometimes associated with the sacking of the library at Alexandria, as she was also the Head Librarian.
It's not just a question of valuing the output of technology but also caring about the details.
the mechanism could be used to predict the month, day and hour of an eclipse, and even accounted for leap years.
The concept of leap years is part of our calendar system but that was invented far after this device was created. Yet, that type of accuracy is simply glossed over. Perhaps the device actually accounted for leap years in their ancient calender system or perhaps the somewhere in the chain from researcher to writer someone failed to understand that leap years having nothing to do with eclipses so it's a non problem. But, the lack of details suggests someone did not really care.
When most people know how to make something that technology is rarely lost but consider how many accidental deaths it would take to set something like CPU fabrication technology back 10 years. Realistically is probably not a real threat, but there is little redundancy in much of our society.
Um...actually the concept of leap years were enshrined in the Julian Calendar a mere 100 years after this device was created, and although this subsequently mutated into the Gregorian calendar (with adjustments for centenary years) the basic idea was contemporary with this device.
Aristarchus, who lived through most of the 3rd century BC, identified the length of the sidereal year with reasonable accuracy and is also the first person that we know of who argued that the earth rotated around the sun, among other insights. Knowing the exact periods of the terrestrial and lunar orbits would obviously have been a necessity for constructing this wondrous machine.
Sorry about the ambiguous that, I was talking about the idea of systematic leap years not our calendar system. It was my understanding that during this time period the calendar was still being reset based the vernal equinox and a hard and fast rule had yet to be added. Otherwise there would have been no need to adopt the Julian calendar in the first place.
According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. On this system, the average Roman year would have had 366¼ days over four years, giving it an average drift of one day per year relative to any solstice or equinox. Macrobius describes a further refinement wherein, for 8 years out of 24, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days. This refinement averages the length of the year to 365¼ days over 24 years. In practice, intercalations did not occur schematically according to these ideal systems, but were determined by the pontifices. So far as can be determined from the historical evidence, they were much less regular than these ideal schemes suggest. They usually occurred every second or third year, but were sometimes omitted for much longer, and occasionally occurred in two consecutive years.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
Quite so - but remember the calendar computer was of Greek origin. It wouldn't surprise me if accurate information about times and seasons were held close to the political and priestly elites rather than publicly disseminated.
I think what the blog writer meant was that they device accounted for the length of the sidereal year accurately...perhaps they calculated exact dates from the nearest solstice or equinox?
I wonder how important it is to have people who can apply a technology into something that is useful to people. Many technologies were adopted, such as fire, axe-making, house-building, pottery, perhaps because they were so obviously and immediately useful.
But more sophisticated technological development often has several intermediate steps that aren't useful; so I agree that it needs to be valued in itself for progress to occur.
The precision machinery of this ancient device was probably used in very few practical products; therefore the skillbase was very fragile and easily lost. Even this ancient device itself would probably only have been used by administrators, who needed to announce the Games.
Of course, it also would have been horrendously expensive, in terms of man-hours for creating it, and also in terms of the years of practice required to attain that level of skill. Only kings could afford it; a niche market.
Indeed. Imagine if everybody got along and actually worked together as a race to further technology. I bet we'd be living on a cluster of awesome planets somewhere, with extremely large lifespans.
That really depends on your definition of improvement. There's been plenty of technological advancements that haven't improved our collective lives, and they are entirely due to a competitive motive.
Gears were already used in India as early as 2600 BC, Aristotle described gears in his lifetime - about 400 BC, and Archimedes' worm wheel dates from about 200 BC. In 40 BC Vitruvius described a grain mill powered by a water wheel and gear transmission, and in 28 BC someone equipped a carriage with an odometer.
Could you please supply more information about the gears being used since 2600 BC in India? Wikipedia's extensive reference doesn't seem to have any
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears.
Also, your initial statement is sine dicendo, therefore useless and rather questions the reason of your comment.
Obviously the Antikythera mechanism is impressive because of the size and detail of the gears and their usage for computation.
The reason for my comment that our ancestors were not as stupid as some contemporary people think, was in reaction on another post which stated that the Antikythera Mechanism was probably just a hundred-year old clock thrown overboard in recent times (I should have quoted that comment for clarity).
Some people cannot fathom that ancient people could realize impressive feats, just like we can. Take for example the pyramids: "the old Egyptians could never have build themselves, they must have gotten extraterrestrial help". This condescending view is also propagated by Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods' books.
> All I have to say is that if it wasn't for the miracle of Christianity, we'd be on %@#&ing Mars by now.
Amusing comment.
Some time ago while looking at some painting in Florence depicting Ascension of Jesus I had following idea:
Time travel is actually physically possible only very hard to come up with.
Christ was rouge time traveler who wanted to pose as god (like in 'Behold The Man') and got himself into a mess. Angels were rescue team that were to revive him and bring him back, but unfortunately the myth that our unfortunate traveler had started screwed up development of human thought so much that development of our science was delayed and took completely different path, far away from any ideas that might lead us to time travel before earth will be totally forgotten (Asimov's foundation like) or destroyed by future generations.
Since Jesus and angels that took him will land somewhere in the future there actually might be second coming. Sort of. i hope we will be able to compare notes on development on human thought then.
How is this a "computer"? The article really doesn't explain and to me it looks more like a clock. Clearly a very advanced clock but a clock none the less.
It depends upon your definition of "computer", of course.
A clock is a single-purpose computing device; it's certainly not a general-purpose computing device, which is what most people when they speak of a "computer".
I suspect the problem, and why much knowledge like this came and went over the centuries, is that so few people understood the why and how of it that once the local guy who did was killed or died, the knowledge went with him and his books were recycled, lost, or destroyed because they appeared meaningless.
How did they manage to replicate the time selection dial on my half-built time machine? Speaking of which, I'm starting a fundraising campaign soon if anyone wants to contribute.
I'm going with clock thrown overboard on a vacation cruise or one of many complex geared machines used aboard ships throughout time for navigation. In any case, just happened to fall off a ship and land on the one below, about 50 to 100 years prior to excavation.
I think one lesson here is that when the society does not value technology, technology suffers. It does not evolve on its own but needs encouragement and support. Just having smart people is not enough.
I sometimes wonder what our life would have been had our ancestors started focusing on science and technology earlier, like if the scientific revolution had occurred several centuries before it did. We could have been much, much farther advanced -- or we could be living in a new stone age, I do not know.