Okay all you culture, Olympics and clock geeks, here’s something you might find captivates your attention for a few minutes.
Previous research on the Antikythera Mechanism established a highly complex ancient Greek geared mechanism with front and back output dials. The upper back dial is a 19-year calendar, based on the Metonic cycle, arranged as a five-turn spiral. The lower back dial is a Saros eclipse-prediction dial, arranged as a four-turn spiral of 223 lunar months, with glyphs indicating eclipse predictions.
Nature’s excellent video showing the device and computer model is where to start.
This extraordinary astronomical mechanism from about 100 bc employed bronze gears to make calculations based on cycles of the Solar System1, 6(Supplementary Notes 1). Recovered in 1901 by Greek sponge-divers, its corroded remains are now split into 82 fragments—7 larger fragments (A–G) and 75 smaller fragments (1–75)6. Data, gathered in 20056, 7, included still photography, digital surface imaging12 and, crucially for this study, microfocus X-ray computed tomography (CT)6, 13 (Figs 1–3)—details are in Supplementary Notes 2 (and at www.antikythera-mechanism.gr).
