Antikythera Device
Ethan Keyser
ME 350X History of Technology
30 October, 2014
Today we watched a program on the Antikythera Device. The Antikythera device was an ancient Greek mechanism that was rediscovered in 1900 by sponge divers. Because it had been siting on the bottom of the Mediterranean for thousands of years, it was very damaged, and its use remained largely unknown. It consisted of a box filled with a complex array of interlocking bronze gears. The complexity of the device shows a level of technical understanding that was not previously attributed to the Greeks.
It is thought that the creator of the device may have been the famous Archimedes, because he is known to have studied time keeping and mechanical devices similar to the Antikythera Device. In the video program engineers tried to recreate the device so that they might better understand its purpose. The modern engineers determined that the device was used to track the relationship between many different astronomical features; although, from the recreations it was not very accurate. In any event, the great significance of the device is that it showed that the classical societies were much more advanced then previously thought.