Just churning out more random posts...

Okay, so take yourself back in time about 2200 years. Place yourself somewhere in the neighborhood of Greece. On a ship, in the Mediterranean. Now, look around and try to imagine what kind of technology you have access to....

If you've never heard of the Antikythera device, well, you're not alone. I hadn't either. It's a mechanism of gears enclosed in a box, that was found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Mediterranean about a century ago. It has been dated to about 200 BC. It was very corroded and incomplete, but after almost a hundred years of studying it with everything from microscopes to X-ray machines to who knows what else, it seems they've finally figured the thing out. The video below shows a reproduction of the original Antikythera mechanism.



So, is that cool or what? Maybe it's just my inner geek, but I bet that's more sophisticated than 98% of the "modern" stuff in my house.

And we're not talking about some fanciful Da Vinci drawing or something. This is an actual device! From 200 BC!!

For more background, here's a 2 part clip from a Nature documentary:




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