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| DavidA:
This has always bothered me. And I would like to have your views on it. I assume everyone knows about The Anti Kythira device. The mechanical calculator found in the Aegian Sea by pearl divers. No doubt you have all seen the video about how it was analysed. If not, you aught to; it's brilliant. BUT. It doesn't make sense. Nothing exists in a vacuum. At least from the mechanical perspective. Yet we are led to believe that this marvelous device is said to be around two tousand years old but there is no 'back-up' technology existing at the time. No one reports finding other geared bronze machines from the same period. Not even simple clocks. It's almost like someone discovering a turbo charged Diesel engine in a pyramid. All machines have developed through incremental modifications. Yet this thing emerges full blown; from nowhere. You can use Harrison's Marine chronometer as a comparison. Even though clocks were quite common place in the period it too him years to develop his version. So where are the contempory devices that must have been around at the time ? Something is wrong with this account. Dave. :scratch: |
| Pete.:
I just watched the documentary about the device and I believe it's origins completely, though I have some reservations on their speculation as to the inventor. Such a device must have taken years of observations, theorising and design and it's entirely possible that that there might only have been one example and none to follow it. |
| NeoTech:
Well they used geometric figures for calculations in that time, circles, lines and big ass drawings.. Then someone sat down thought about it for like.. 40 years and figured out a way of drawing geometric figures abstractly over time by using a mechanical device.. But i agree.. the developing process had to be agonizing. But just because we have a incremental "test and develope" approach up an until the mid 80s doesnt mean they really had to have it then.. Look at IT.. there we make quantum leaps in technology every 6-8 yers or so based on theory alone, with no prior testing.. |
| lordedmond:
its not IT technology its ET technology :poke: just joking its a clever bit of kit that they have only now replicated, but I seem to remember there was a lot of differential gearing in the device , when they made it to todays standard it was to good and would not turn even with the correct tooth count so the slacked the design and it would then function this device always prompt my thought lost knowledge this has happened for a long time e.g. how did the guys in Egypt carve out the granite sarcophagus ( the hole in the middle ) it would task us today to do it a lot of thing from the past are not understood because of the lost knowledge syndrome Stuart |
| DMIOM:
I too have wondered about the lack, so far, of any other similarly complex mechanisms - however the underlying knowledge was being assembled, especially once Pythagoras suggested the Earth was a sphere. As it may give some idea of early knowledge of the terrestrial sphere's geometry, I've taken (and paraphrased) a few of the headline points from a recent excellent article in "Navigation News" * * Eratosthones (276-194 BC) realised that, given that the sun shone directly down a well at Syene in Egypt on midusmmer's day, and that it was 1/50th lower at Alexandria, arrived at a conclusion that the earth's polar circumference was (in modern terms) 39,690 km - only 1% different compared to modern polar circumference of 40,008 km * Posidonius (c135-51 BC) compared the elevation of the star Canopus (as more of a point source than the Sun) at Alexandria and Rhodes, but only got to 37,800km polar circumference (possibly due to errors in the baseline measurement) * More recently, Richard Norwood (c1590-1675) measured the sun's midsummer noon elevation at the Tower of London and in York, a difference of 2 degrees 28 minutes. He then set about measuring the distance between the two observation points, using a 99 foot long surveyor's chain - he got the distance to 367,196 feet (with allowance for the variation in the chain's direction not being exactly N-S, by logging the compass bearing of each chain run). His computed polar circumference was 40,291km compared the current 40,008 km !Dave * Navigation News, Royal Institute of Navigation, May/June 2013 edition "Marine Navigation - a Miscellany of Historical Notes", Ted Gerrard. |
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