Its circular, clock-like face boasted rotating, bejeweled hands that depicted the movement of planetary objects. Users would wind the hands with a knob or handle on its side. As Ian Sample reports for the Guardian , researchers suspect that the device numbered among the items on a merchant ship that was sunk in a storm in the first century B. UCL researchers relied on key previous studies to create their model.
Because the Greeks believed that Earth was at the center of the solar system, they tracked the amount of time that it took for planets to return to the same position in the night sky. When past or future dates were entered via a crank now lost , the mechanism calculated the position of the Sun, Moon or other astronomical information such as the location of other planets.
The differential was used to compute the synodic lunar cycle by subtracting the effects of the sun's movement from those of the sidereal lunar movement. It is possible that the mechanism is based on heliocentric principles, rather than the then-dominant geocentric view espoused by Aristotle and others. Reference Terms. The Antikythera mechanism is one of the world's oldest known geared devices. It has puzzled and intrigued historians of science and technology since its discovery.
The use of differential gears enabled the mechanism to add or subtract angular velocities. Related Stories. The discovered fragments made up just one-third of a larger device: a highly-sophisticated hand-powered gearbox capable of accurately predicting the motions of the five planets known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the sun, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses — displaying them all relative to the timings of ancient events such as the Olympic Games.
Related: Photos: Ancient Greek shipwreck yields Antikythera mechanism. Yet despite years of painstaking research and debate, scientists were never able to fully replicate the mechanism that drove the astonishing device, or the calculations used in its design, from the battered and corroded brass fragments discovered in the wreck.
But now researchers at University College London say they have fully recreated the design of the device, from the ancient calculations used to create it, and are now putting together their own contraption to see if their design works. The researchers wanted to recreate the device because of all the mystery surrounding it, as a way to possibly get to the bottom of so many questions.
In addition, nobody had ever created a model of the so-called Cosmos that reconciled with all of the physical evidence. It's out of this world. The intricate gears that made up the device's mechanism are of a scale you could expect to find in a grandfather clock, but the only other gears discovered from around the same period are the much larger ones that went into things like ballistas, or large crossbows, and catapults. The back of the mechanism was solved by earlier studies, but the nature of its complex gearing system at the front has remained a mystery.
They have recreated the entire front panel, and now hope to build a full-scale replica of the Antikythera using modern materials. On Friday, a paper published in Scientific Reports revealed a new display of the gearing system that showed its fine details and complex parts. The mechanism has been described as an astronomical calculator as well as the world's first analogue computer.
It is made of bronze and includes dozens of gears.
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