About a hundred years ago while diving for sponges a weird mechanism was found by fishermen at the bottom of the sea near the Greek island of Antikythera.
It astonished the then experts on the
ancient world. They thought at first that it was an astrolabe. Then it was thought to be an Orrery or possibly an astronomical
clock.
For the next fifty years, scientific investigation
carried out on the object failed to find a solution and relied more on guesswork than anything else. However more recent research over the last half century has slowly begun to reveal
its secrets.
The device dates from around the end of the 2nd century
B.C. so it is around 2200 years old. The device is with out any doubt the most sophisticated mechanism known from that time period in the ancient
world. There has not been another device anything like as complex for another thousand years.
The
Antikythera device is now believed to be dedicated to astronomical
phenomena. Operating as a complex mechanical "computer" which tracks
the cycles of the Solar System.
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