[HN Gopher] The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets
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The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets
Author : ppod
Score : 185 points
Date : 2022-01-04 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Great read, love how it has a display. Something for the kings of
| the era to be amazed by.
| areoform wrote:
| The Antikythera mechanism gives me nightmares. Just as the
| suggestion that a lack of transmissions from intelligent life
| means the existence of a great filter. The Antikythera mechanism
| is a strong indicator of technological regression in human
| beings.
|
| Perhaps more terrifying is the fact that it is not the first time
| we've regressed or collapsed. The mysterious Late Bronze Age
| Collapse is another example,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse Or, the
| Classic Maya civilization collapse,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Maya_collapse
|
| It is inconceivable for us to imagine a rapid regression today.
| Our civilization seems invincible, the knowledge seems to be too
| widespread. But most of our knowledge is brittle. If you were to
| send a time capsule forward with the recipes to remake our modern
| world, including eUV technology. How would you do it? (using
| extant literature)
|
| Research papers require years of study and background knowledge
| to fully understand and they fully fail to capture the science
| involved. Patents are even more inscrutable. We couldn't send our
| CAD drawings and specifications forward either, because they
| require specialized knowledge as well. After all, how would they
| build an iPhone if they don't know how to make screws or glue?
| Or, the multi-layer PCBs etc.
|
| Another renaissance to recreate our civilization from our
| published work would be nearly impossible. Or, take centuries to
| accomplish.
|
| It may be fruitful to imagine ways to fit civilization into a box
| that can last tens of thousands of years, so that future
| generations can find it ---- post apocalyptic tragedy ---- and
| rapidly recreate our world.
| FooHentai wrote:
| >If you were to send a time capsule forward with the recipes to
| remake our modern world, including eUV technology. How would
| you do it?
|
| Acknowledging that I'm being edgy here...
|
| "What do you get the man who has everything? Might I suggest a
| gravestone inscribed with the words: so what?" -- Simon Munnery
|
| I think I probably just wouldn't do it. In part because I
| suspect the main motivation is our existential angst more than
| a genuine desire to help unknown future persons.
| short12 wrote:
| Or a copy of ozymandias?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The Antikythera mechanism is a strong indicator of
| technological regression in human beings.
|
| Is it evidence of widespread technological regression, or "this
| small group with strong leadership did amazing things, too bad
| nobody can do that anymore", or just people not wanting it
| anymore?
|
| For centuries after it was built, there was no large scale
| collapse that could bring a widespread regression (there were
| many localized ones, including on the place that built it), and
| clockmaking was never considered a lost art or anything like
| that.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Well some ancient alien conspiracy theories suggest nuclear
| bombs have been dropped on different parts of the planet.
|
| Mahabharata a short distance from Jodpur in India, which
| Oppenheimer commented on.
|
| Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan
|
| Nuclear destruction of Sumer linked with the Anunnaki.
|
| Pyramids in other places around the planet besides Egypt, its
| possible mainstream history isnt telling us everything or we
| have a sanitised version of history.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| As fun as these speculations are, there is nothing cohesive
| about it. "which Oppenheimer commented on" - or he just
| wanted to say something that sounded badass and educated in
| his "I am become...the destroyer of worlds."
|
| /* Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan Nuclear destruction of Sumer
| linked with the Anunnaki. */
|
| 0 evidence
|
| "Pyramids in other places around the planet besides Egypt,
| its possible mainstream history isnt telling us everything
| or we have a sanitised version of history."
|
| Very different pyramids. Other places had houses too. Some
| of them were square and some round. Could it be ancient
| aliens?!
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Unfortunately watching an increasing number of TV
| programs is like watching/listening to someone talking
| whilst on drugs, they jump around all over the place, I'm
| sure its creating ADHD in me as a result.
| areoform wrote:
| The mechanism suggests a strong "industrial" base to support
| it. They had to get the metals from somewhere, find the
| expert artisans to craft from somewhere else, source the
| parts, find the tooling etc.
|
| Just as a mass produced pencil isn't just a pencil, it is the
| _capacity_ to produce the pencil.
|
| They had the capacity to create precision gearing, which
| suggests a level of mechanical prowess that isn't matched
| until a century or so before the dawn of the industrial age.
| nemo wrote:
| FWIW, the device is called an 'orrery'. When it was made in
| Syracuse, it wasn't a product of an industrial base, but
| was a project made by a certain sort of mathematician and
| scholar doing cutting edge engineering and applied
| mathematics. The Antikythera one seems to go back to the
| traditions from Archimedes' workshop which was amazingly
| advanced. Archimedes wrote a treatise on building them (now
| lost, alas). Orrery making in something like Archmedes'
| tradition continued on for hundreds of years outside
| Syracuse, esp. in Athens and Alexandria, and we have
| references to orrery making through the ages. The art of
| making them was a product of libraries and schools where
| they were created by scholars as an academic craft, not an
| industrial production facility.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's not that industrial base.
|
| If devices like the antikythera were commonly produced,
| we'd find more of them, and descriptions of them. This
| looks like a one-off achievement.
|
| I'd rather say that this maybe more like a Saturn-5 of the
| day: a top achievement that required extraordinary efforts,
| and not very reproducible because of that. Most things
| around and in its production chain were not nearly as
| advanced.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Commercial metalworking stayed around all the time until
| today. It only increased and improved. (It's made of
| bronze, it's not like bronze working was lost.)
|
| The tooling may evidence some kind of regression. I really
| don't know what kind of tooling was needed to create this,
| although gears by themselves and high precision in a single
| mechanism do not say much. From the looks of it, this
| devices requires a lot of theoretical knowledge, but not so
| much practical one (but that's an uninformed opinion, if
| you have information, it would be great). The theory was
| not lost in any way.
| hasmanean wrote:
| Don't forget the fact that the mechanism used a model
| made by Hipparchus, but after Hellenism the Greeks
| adopted the Ptolemaic geocentric view of the cosmos with
| epicycles and stuff.
|
| Epicycles delivered more precision but at the cost of
| much greater complexity. Ultimately it took Kepler to
| simplify it even more through his iterative equation
| though I can't imagine how to turn that into a mechanical
| model.
|
| The Antikythera mechanism was possible because of the
| simplicity of the underlying solar system model that lent
| itself to easy implementation by gears. It's much more
| elegant than even modern methods of computing orbits.
| That's the main surprise I find in its design...how much
| they could simplify it (and not how complex the
| mechanical construction is).
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Or, even better documented, the civilizational collapse in the
| aftermath of the fall of Western Roman Empire. It recovered in
| the second half of the medieval period, but in the West, the
| first few centuries after the fall were truly Dark Ages indeed.
| momojo wrote:
| Reminds me of Asimov's Foundation trilogy.
|
| "Seldon explains that his science of psychohistory foresees
| many alternatives, all of which result in the Galactic Empire
| eventually falling. If humanity follows its current path, the
| Empire will fall and 30,000 years of turmoil will overcome
| humanity before a second Empire arises. However, an alternative
| path allows for the intervening years to be only one thousand"
|
| Source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series#Foundation_(...
| akomtu wrote:
| It's the normal progression of civilizations. When one gets too
| rusty, it dies to lets its small and better offspring live:
| those people start from scratch, but they retain knowledge and
| rebuild all bells and whistles very quickly. We are the fifth.
| America will be home for the sixth and then, in a thousand
| years, it will become a history too. This is what Revelation
| 17:10 talks about, but in a more poetical form.
| npunt wrote:
| If you're interested in the subject, I'd recommend the Fall of
| Civilizations podcast which digs into various civilizations and
| their decline:
| https://www.patreon.com/fallofcivilizations_podcast
| interroboink wrote:
| You might like Jonathan Blow's talk "Preventing the Collapse of
| Civilization": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk
|
| Also, is your name a reference to the Mars trilogy? Reading
| that now (:
| areoform wrote:
| Yes, it is! I even had the chance to talk to Kim Stanley
| Robinson about it :)
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| > It is inconceivable for us to imagine a rapid regression
| today
|
| To the contrary, I'm finding it increasingly likely that I will
| see the collapse of civilization within my lifetime, and I'm
| 57. I see two prospective tipping points on the horizon: the
| collapse of democracy in the U.S. leading to nuclear war, and
| climate change leading to world-wide food shortages. The former
| seems likely within 5-10 years, and the latter within 20-30.
|
| (And BTW, I am not feeling anywhere near as sanguine about this
| as the text above makes it sound.)
| FpUser wrote:
| Why would collapse of democracy in the US lead to nuclear
| war?
| imoverclocked wrote:
| The US is a major nuclear power and is one body that
| actively works to counter-balance nuclear proliferation in
| the world.
| tehjoker wrote:
| they'll fight other countries to deflect from internal
| problems
| nine_k wrote:
| Did the collapse of democracy in Russia lead to nuclear
| war?
| tehjoker wrote:
| It didn't which is great news, but tbh I regard the
| Russians as more rational than us.
| quacked wrote:
| You don't know any Russians then, haha
| lisper wrote:
| Or you don't know any self-styled "real Americans".
| tehjoker wrote:
| I'm thinking more of their cold war strategizing, but I
| also ask you, have you ever met an American QAnon
| enthusiast? ;)
| FpUser wrote:
| Nothing new. They were fighting other countries all
| along. Still not suicidal.
| lisper wrote:
| Not quite sure how to answer that if it's not already
| obvious to you. If democracy collapses, the result will
| almost certainly be Donald Trump being effectively a
| dictator. He very nearly started a nuclear war on more than
| one occasion during his first administration when some
| checks and balances were still in place [1] [2]. Nothing
| could stop him if he decided to do it again during his
| second.
|
| [1] https://gizmodo.com/the-pentagon-worried-trump-was-
| about-to-...
|
| [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/milley-acted-
| prevent-t...
| FpUser wrote:
| >"He very nearly started a nuclear war on more than one
| occasion during his first administration
|
| The info in the links you've mentioned does not inspire
| much confidence.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'll bet you $1M that civilization doesn't collapse within 30
| years!
| lisper wrote:
| I would like nothing better than to lose that bet, but I
| don't think my wife would approve. How about a bottle of
| your favorite scotch? (Which may well cost $1M 30 years
| from now.)
| kingcharles wrote:
| I don't think any of those events will come to pass, but I
| suspect you might live long enough to see The Singularity
| arrive, and that might be the harbinger of doom you are
| seeking.
| lisper wrote:
| One could argue that this has already happened: social
| media is the singularity. The evil AI doesn't have to be
| implemented entirely in silicon. Indeed, that fact that it
| runs in part on human brains helps it remain stealthy.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Now that is an interesting take - are you thinking an
| emergent hive mind is in social media, and that is
| controlling society? Quite interesting...
| lisper wrote:
| More or less. Human brains are an emergent property of a
| large number of highly interconnected neurons, so I see
| no reason something similar couldn't emerge from a large
| number of highly interconnected brains.
|
| But the thing to keep in mind is that this emergent thing
| is not necessarily conscious or intentional, but if it
| reaches the point where it self-replicates then it
| becomes effectively a life form that starts to undergo
| Darwinian evolution and thus becomes very difficult to
| get rid of. The point is that all this is (potentially)
| just a straightforward consequence of the laws of
| physics, not some sci-fi super-villain going "Bwahahaha!
| Silly humans!" in the back of data center somewhere.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Yes, I follow your reasoning. I buy the existence of a
| subtle, self perpetuating public attitude. It may
| emergently coordinate to the degree it is
| indistinguishable from an independant living entity. Once
| it is named, it will be seen and observed everywhere, and
| blamed for all manner of evils. It's the boogieman, in
| reality: a manifestation of all our collective fears.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| And explains why it is also so messed up at the same
| time.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Another renaissance to recreate our civilization from
| our published work would be nearly impossible. Or,
| take centuries to accomplish.
|
| It might not be possible at all.
|
| We've long since used up the "easy" sources of energy on this
| planet - all of the fossil fuels conveniently located near the
| earth's surface have long been depleted. By the time they could
| possibly be replenished, the Sun will be nearing the end of its
| life. So we probably won't be bootstraping our way back to an
| advanced society via a second fossil fuel-powered industrial
| revolution similar to the first one.
|
| The remaining energy sources are generally pretty tricky to
| harness.
|
| For example, even if the knowledge to build nuclear reactors or
| solar panels is not lost during a civilization collapse, it
| will be awfully tough to actually get those power sources back
| online without an existing industrial infrastructure to
| mine/refine/transport all of the necessary ingredients.
|
| If we get a "second chance" at this civilization thing, the
| road there is going to be insanely hard even if we're lucky
| enough to start out with all of the science-y stuff that our
| _first_ civilization figured out eons ago.
| istinetz wrote:
| >By the time they could possibly be replenished, the Sun will
| be nearing the end of its life.
|
| What? No. You're making shit up and passing it as fact.
|
| >Most anthracite and bituminous coals occur within the 299-
| to 359.2-million-year-old strata of the Carboniferous Period,
| the so-called first coal age.
|
| >Astronomers estimate that the sun has about 7 billion to 8
| billion years left before it sputters out and dies.
|
| There are several other completely made up things in your
| post.
| asdff wrote:
| Couldn't you just burn plastic directly? Mine a landfill and
| burn it up.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Mine it with slave labour to separate the items, and you
| end up with glass, metals and plastics is amounts that
| would be worth a fortune to a roman level civilization.
|
| We think of it as garbage, bur that garbage already
| represents a lot of energy already used to process them to
| that level.
| codesnik wrote:
| Writings on the mechanism are surprisingly crude for the
| artisanship of the mechanism itself.
| fouc wrote:
| Probably just different material (not bronze)
| [deleted]
| doctor_eval wrote:
| No wireless. Only five planets. Lame.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Is it just me, or is the Antikythera calling out for a Dr. Who
| episode tying it to aliens or some other fantastic explanation?
| jl6 wrote:
| I think there was an attempt in FlashForward, but the series
| got cancelled.
| utopcell wrote:
| I remember reading that Clickspring's Chris has committed to
| giving away the Antikythera device to a random patreon supporter
| of his once it is completed.
| skunkworker wrote:
| Every time I think about the Antikythera mechanism the quote by
| Arthur C. Clarke comes to mind
|
| "If the insight of the Greeks had matched their ingenuity...we
| would not merely be puttering around on the Moon, we would have
| reached the nearer stars."
|
| It's a little sensational but also makes me think of what
| could've been, if certain paths had been realized in past times,
| and also makes me put the technical knowledge of past
| civilizations in much higher regard.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I find it to be a good reminder that whatever complexity we
| have managed to create today likely won't last for 1000s or
| even 100s of years. We initially didn't believe that precision
| gears were possible for the time period this device comes from.
|
| Sometimes I think about how I might present a progression from
| electricity and transistors to fully functional computers for a
| future society that somehow lost the knowledge. Most of our
| computing devices won't last 100 years. The ones that do might
| be older equipment with a little more "silicon redundancy" or
| even materials that are more resistant to corrosion... if they
| aren't mined for it first. Given that we store almost all of
| our current knowledge in electronic form, corroding/losing the
| ability to retrieve it will likely mean the end of the art.
| kej wrote:
| You comment reminds me of one of my favorite short stories,
| Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken":
| https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
| dougmwne wrote:
| This realization hit me after spending a few weeks in Italy
| seeing the remains of the Roman Empire. I had a building sense
| that they were awfully close to the industrial revolution, that
| there was no particular reason it couldn't have happened
| thousands of years ago in the face of a highly organized, long
| lived, innovative empire with enormous resources. I think it's
| an accident of history that it happened in England instead.
| cwkoss wrote:
| What were the main factors that prevented the roman empire
| from having an industrial revolution?
|
| Is there a single technology, that if sent back in time,
| would have sustained their empire? (Steam engine? Hydropower
| improvements? Standardized measurements for tighter
| tolerances?)
| SapporoChris wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Require
| m...
|
| I found this a fascinating read. Below that section is a
| list of technological developments.
| Kalium wrote:
| I've seen the argument made that the major factor was
| slavery. In general, they had a cheap source of unskilled
| labor. Major advances in industrialization were often
| driven, in no small part, by high labor costs.
| thewarrior wrote:
| They did not have the printing press or free markets. The
| combination of the wider dissemination of ways of knowing and
| acting in a free market of ideas combined with a free market
| of individuals and firms that applied the knowledge is what
| set it all off.
|
| The ancient Greeks had a steam engine. There were no mass
| printed books so barely anyone knew about it. Even if you
| knew you couldn't exactly start a company.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| L. Sprague De Camp had the same opinion
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall
| bsenftner wrote:
| Although other books claim the title today, for a few
| decades "Lest Darkness Fall" was considered the first
| distinctly science fiction novel.
| svachalek wrote:
| Check out some of the research on how the terra cotta army in
| Xi'an was produced. There were some very modern (20th
| century) mass production techniques in place. It's pretty
| fascinating to see how differently history could have gone.
| topper-123 wrote:
| A fun alternative time line to think about would be if the
| romans had progressed, had depleted all coal and oil
| resources, leaving us today in a postapocalyptic wasteland,
| having the knowledge how to build an advanced society, but
| lacking the ressources...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| They had nothing like the Modern age's science. I can't
| imagine any reason for it not appearing there given enough
| time, but they didn't have the dispassionate questioning of
| every theory and total submission to empiricism that are
| fundamental to science today.
|
| Math advanced a huge amount during the Medieval age. They
| simply didn't have good tools for calculations, and nearly
| all of the Modern Age's math was based on questions that they
| didn't even consider to ask by then.
|
| There were huge advances on material handling during the
| Medieval and Modern ages. Not only the obvious ones on
| metallurgy, but on glass working and ceramics too. All of
| those were important.
|
| And let's not underestimate the individuals. Had Newton not
| been born, our Industrial Revolution could be delayed for
| many decades too. Anyway, it's no accident that when he
| appeared, he was at England, there was basically no other
| place on the world where somebody like him could do what he
| did.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| You are giving way too much credit to science in the early
| phase of industrial revolution. Science has been extremely
| important in technological development from late 1800s
| onwards, but the most critical leaps of late 1700s and
| early 1800s had little to do with Newton-style science.
| Instead, they mostly about engineering improvements,
| combined with a newly widespread social attitude that
| technology actually can be significantly improved. Flying
| shuttle has not been based on some theoretical scientific
| model, but rather on experience with making looms and
| ingenuity in improving them. Similarly, Watt didn't create
| his engine based on theory of thermodynamics, instead he
| just observed that repeatedly heating and cooling the
| cylinder is wasteful, and came up with a technique to avoid
| that.
|
| If you follow the development Industrial Revolution, you'll
| see that it's mostly thanks to ingenious engineers, not
| smart scientists. The scientists did occasionally deliver
| something valuable, often in fact paradigm-changing, but
| importantly, this only became very relevant around the turn
| of 20th century.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Having forces defined as a quantifiable concept that you
| can easily predict is quite important for tooling and
| creating reproducible machines. The Mechanics is quite
| important for mechanical engineering.
|
| Yes, those engineers were inventing most things by
| themselves, but they didn't work in a vacuum.
| krallja wrote:
| > The scientists did occasionally deliver something
| valuable, often in fact paradigm-changing, but
| importantly, this only became very relevant around the
| turn of 20th century.
|
| James Watt was only able to build efficient steam engines
| because Joseph Black discovered latent heat in 1761.
| Without steam engines, there's no industrial revolution.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Not an accident. Energy. Rome as a meta-organism was limited
| by available energy- trees weren't enough, and denudation of
| forests was already a limiting factor. Meanwhile, Britain had
| plentiful coal in easily-accessible abundance. No point in
| developing steam and a theory of thermodynamics when you
| can't use the results.
| sideshowb wrote:
| I thought denudation of forest was a limiting factor in the
| UK too, indeed a motivating factor for
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Darby_I
| wbl wrote:
| Italy does have some coal and Rome at one point had the
| coal seams of the UK.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| Really dumb question, but one I must ask after reading this
| article and then your post. Could it be possible that humans
| had some pretty awesome technology even farther in the past
| than we know (beyond earliest recorded history), but due to
| some extinction event all records of society from that time
| were wiped out?
|
| For example if we had some crazy extinction event, the dark
| ages that would follow are pretty scary to think about. I would
| feel like the researchers trying to understand what I'm looking
| at, and they mention there's some sort of user manual
| inscription. If we are reduced to small tribes again, with no
| access to internet, electricity, running water, etc. I can't
| imagine us actually recovering to the current state without
| thousands of years. Most people have no idea how anything
| works, we just buy it on amazon and it arrives tomorrow or
| stream the latest movie. Just thought I'd throw my dumb
| question out there lol.
| badlukk wrote:
| Look into Graham Hancock, he writes a lot about possible lost
| civilizations. He gets lots of hate and I have no idea if any
| of it is true, but super fun to read.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| What'll really bake your noodle is the fact that we most
| likely couldn't tell if there was a pre-human civilization on
| earth, even around industrial levels. What we have now will
| easily last a thousand years - but not a thousand thousands
| years.
|
| And my favorite hypothesis: Antarctica. If there ever was a
| species which flourished there, it's a lot harder for them to
| colonize the rest of the world than it is for us to visit
| Antarctica. Clothes you can just wear, and heating is pretty
| straightforward - but having to venture in a place where
| portable aircon failure means death will pretty much
| guarantee you don't build a lot far from home. Which puts a
| pretty high limit on how far a civilization could have gotten
| there and still have all traces hidden in the ice.
| creato wrote:
| I doubt this is really true. We've identified many traces
| of life from millions of years ago. You don't think we
| could find some bricks or beams from an industrial
| civilization?
| xenadu02 wrote:
| We can be reasonably certain there were no such civilizations
| on Earth prior to modern human history, otherwise we'd see
| evidence in the archeological record or even fossil record. I
| don't mean finding silicon chips in a fossil or anything so
| advanced. I mean very simple things like ceramic chips or
| bits of worked glass that would survive for millions of
| years.
|
| The only way a civilization at least as advanced as bronze-
| age humans existed 100k+ years ago is if it was visitors from
| a parent civilization on another world that died out. That's
| the only way you get advanced technology on a small enough
| scale that we wouldn't be able to find any clues because the
| clues would be localized to a tiny area we just haven't
| stumbled across yet (to be clear I don't think any such
| civilization ever existed).
| decebalus1 wrote:
| No at all a dumb question :) It's actually a fascinating
| question!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
| neogodless wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| This mechanism comes up a lot. Is there a TL;DR about what's new
| in this particular submission?
| marstall wrote:
| this was an amazing read!
|
| I know some are upset at certain recent SciAm op-eds.
|
| But every issue has 2-5 gorgeous, beefy articles like this one
| that make me a happy paying subscriber.
|
| Absolutely stunning visualization of the inner workings of this
| marvelous device.
| reactspa wrote:
| > in his model, the 223-tooth gear turned much too fast for it to
| make sense. But in my model, the 223-tooth gear rotates very
| slowly
|
| Science!
|
| (Clarification: it all sounds very narrative-fallacy to me. Hey,
| but feel free to downvote the opinion of a contrarian!)
| JshWright wrote:
| I think the downvotes are because you are making a very low
| effort criticism (even with your clarification). If you expand
| a bit on why it sounds "narrative-fallacy" to you, you might
| get more traction.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| I am sure he mention the engaging a 38 tooth gear that meant a
| 19 year cycle was done at half the speed first thought was
| needed.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| The famous Antikythera mechanism:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778874
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Antikythera
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm wondering if anyone has created a software model of the
| mechanism.
|
| Is anyone aware of such a project?
|
| It sounds right up the alley of many HN readers.
| sdrabing wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing! I 3D model would be really neat
| to watch and pick apart.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Backwards engineering the front and back and how it all came
| together and passed though has me picturing this as a possibly
| the earliest front end/back end development situation. It even
| included documentation. A software version would be neat to
| see.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I feel like I saw one on the F-Droid app repository
| cormullion wrote:
| I have one on mu iPad. There are 2 in the App Store, I think.
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| The 19 year Metonic cycle is interesting. I think it is also the
| orbital period of the moons nodes (aka dragon head/tail or north
| node/south node or rahu/Ketu in Indian astronomy). I wonder if
| there is a connection.
| krastanov wrote:
| This very talented machinist (Clickspring's Chris) is recreating
| the device using tools from that age on their YouTube channel
| https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to...
|
| It is an amazing playlist.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Chris Budiselic and colleagues also wrote a paper
| https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/ proposing that the
| front dial might be a 354-day lunar calendar rather than a
| 365-day solar calendar.
| [deleted]
| wesleyoneal wrote:
| Tools from that age? I'm on video 2, and it looks like he's
| using a bunch of modern tools that wouldn't have been available
| 2000+ years ago?
| JshWright wrote:
| It's not exactly "making the whole thing with period tools"
| but rather "exploring how each part could have been made
| using available technology (but still doing the bulk of the
| work with modern tooling)".
| posterboy wrote:
| Should shut off the camera first of all. I'm too pessimistic,
| sorry.
| krazerlasers wrote:
| Keep watching -- he gets more into the period appropriate
| tools later in the series including home made drills, files,
| layout ink, soldering tools, etc
| Luc wrote:
| The ancient tool series is another list of his: https://www.y
| outube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsGnUXuZScwn...
| incomplete wrote:
| i'm 5m in to the first video and already hooked. incredible
| work... i saw the actual device in athens and the craftsmanship
| is still visible, and this is a fitting tribute. :)
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| Clickspring is an absolute delight. The videos are straight up
| machining porn and the stuff that he builds is fascinating in
| its own right, the Antikythera mechanism being a perfect
| example. I cannot recommend this channel enough.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/Clickspring/
| phcreery wrote:
| This series is so good but it is unfinished with the last video
| being uploaded 5 years ago. I want for Chris to finish it so
| badly.
| jaggederest wrote:
| All of his videos are behind a Patreon paywall these days, as
| far as I can tell. He's still working on the Antikythera
| mechanism, it's just only visible to patrons.
| dghughes wrote:
| Patreon has gone from helpful support by a few to an
| exclusive club.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > an exclusive club
|
| The club is affordable. What makes it exclusive is the
| intellectual alignment required to unlock the value of
| the information. Not everyone has that. If you have it,
| consider joining the club while you are still alive so
| you can enjoy the benefits of membership and fraternity
| with people like you. After that brief period expires,
| the club will be truly exclusive for a long time.
| brchr wrote:
| For the donation of a single dollar, you are given access
| to all of his videos. I would not describe that as
| "exclusive," although I understand what you are saying.
| cercatrova wrote:
| It was always meant for people to be patrons of someone,
| like artists were back in the Renaissance. It's simply a
| way for people to be paid for their work, and what better
| way than exclusivity? That's basically the same as being
| able to use software only if it's paid for, like most
| SaaS these days.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The most recent video in that playlist was uploaded in
| December 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKgdq57uOo&lis
| t=PLZioPDnFPN... (before that the previous video was from
| October 2018; maybe you meant ~3 years ago)
|
| There is also an 'antikythera fragments' playlist with the
| most recent video from September 2021 https://www.youtube.com
| /watch?v=BLBDKmFG90U&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
| falcolas wrote:
| Yeah, working on the paper put a real stop to the work, but
| it seems to be back up and running again.
| fforflo wrote:
| I live a 10' min walking distance from the museum the mechanism
| is displayed. Reading this makes me a bit ashamed for not
| spending hours just looking at it.
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