Book review: Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant

November 6, 2008

Imagine if Howard Carter had opened Tutankhamen’s tomb and found an internal combustion engine inside. That’s the sort of surprise scholars received when they realised what had been hauled up from a Mediterranean shipwreck in 1901 and left in a cigar box in the storeroom of a Greek museum.

Amongst the treasures of one of the richest hauls of ancient Greek statues ever found was what appeared to be a corroded lump of bronze. It turned out to be an intricately constructed mechanical device, an analogue computer, the world’s oldest surviving machine.

The Antikythera mechanism, as it became known, was more than 2000 years old. As New Scientist’s own Jo Marchant explains in Decoding the Heavens, it would be at least 1000 years before anything of similar complexity came along.

The Antikythera mechanism consists of numerous fragments, including brass gears embedded in thick mineral encrustations (Image: Jo Marchant)

Who could have built such a machine? What was it for? Why was the technology lost? Far from being a hunk of junk, this was the most important artefact yet found from ancient Greece.

More about this,
click image

Posted in Computer Technology, History, Science and Technology