By Tim Binnall
A team of researchers in England believe they may have unraveled the mystery surrounding how the 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator known as the Antikythera Mechanism functioned and could soon have a working model of the device for demonstration. Remnants of the curious object, which many historians consider to be the world's first analog computer, were originally recovered from a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera back in 1901. Since that time, the piece has puzzled scientists, who have struggled to make sense of its complex construction. However, a new study by experts at the University College London (UCL) may finally provide a glimpse at the inner workings of the famed device.
Used to display the positions of the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn relative to Earth, which was believed at the time to be the center of the universe, the bronze device operated by way of a series of intricate gears contained within a fairly compact box. Reconstructing the mechanism has always proven to be a considerable challenge because only remnants of it remain and the rest relied on a certain amount of speculation from researchers. Drawing upon previous studies of the device, the writing found on the object, and ancient Greek mathematical models for the cycles of the planets as seen from Earth, the team at UCL were able to create a computer-generated model that appears to fully replicate the gear system of the device.
Although there have been previous attempts at such a feat, lead researcher Tony Freeth explained in a press release that "ours is the first model that conforms to all the physical evidence and matches the descriptions in the scientific inscriptions engraved on the mechanism itself." This team now plans to set about actually building a working version of the device in order to test their proverbial blueprint. However, they cautioned that the real challenge will be to see if it can be constructed using only the techniques available in ancient Greece, which could prove problematic to their hypothesis since their model contains a "system of nested tubes" that may have been impossible to fashion at the time the device was created.