Mystery of Ancient Calculator Finally Cracked 241
jcaruso writes, "It's been more than 100 years since the discovery of the 2,000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, but researchers are only now figuring out how it works." From the article:
"Since its discovery in 1902, the Antikythera Mechanism — with its intricate and baffling system of about 30 geared wheels — has been an enigma... During the last 50 years, researchers have identified various astronomical and calendar functions, including gears that mimic the movement of the sun and moon. But it has taken some of the most advanced technology of the 21st century to decipher during the past year the most advanced technology of the 1st century B.C."
slownewsday (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
I wish they'd bloody well get round to publishing the full translation of the text, though!
Re:slownewsday (Score:5, Insightful)
stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:slownewsday (Score:3, Insightful)
"No comment."
Film next week.
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
"Rupert."
KFG
Re:The question on everyones lips... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the big business (Sony/MS/Real *and* Apple) get their way all these little plastic discs and memory stones will just be pretty ornaments to our descendants.
There will be no way to decode the data stored within.
We will become a black hole in history (no goatse refs).
Re:The question on everyones lips... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can just see 'em sittin' around saying "We don't know WTF they were thinking, because we don't know WTF they were thinking"
You take F451, I'll take Time Enough For Love. We can pool camping gear.
KFG
Relative Difficulty (Score:4, Insightful)
To pull out the old quote, "It is twice as difficult to debug a program as to write it. Therefore, if you put all of your creativity and effort into writing the program, you are not smart enough to debug it."
Without any information even about what it's supposed to do, beyond being a series of gears, without knowing if it's even a fragment of a larger whole - or even knowing if it actually worked for the intended process (or was the ancient equivalent of a buggy program), that makes for quite a challenge.
I'm guessing, in the future, a massively advanced civilization that came across the ones and zeroes of Internet Explorer, without the O.S., without info about HTTP, without Windows or a computer based off that comical silicon technology they've only found fragments of, they wouldn't be able to figure it out either.
Like the Mormons' tablets... (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF
Re:slownewsday (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting less important (Score:4, Insightful)
Slide rules: very few still in use today, but they were very important from 1620's (when they were invented) until the 1970/1980s -- 350 years.
Now, a calculator older than 5 years is a historical curiosity (although I still use a 15-year old calculator on a day-to-day basis).
What we're seeing is a shortened lifetime for calculators, software, etc. which probably makes documentation less important (excpet for historical curiosity). You would not realisticly expect any software / device you design now to be in use 350 or 2000 years from now.
Most Advanced? (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that we know only as much about such ancient times by the encrusted ruins we find, how do we know that this was thier most advanced?? Ive read about the roman factories [waterhistory.org] recently that gives me the impression we really don't know much more than what most og us have seen in Spartacus.
Re:Getting less important (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Physical Perl (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually there is still some controversy regarding one of the oldest cookbooks ever found. There is a recipe which was once thought to be for flapjacks. However, another school of thought states that it is in fact a shortbread recipe. The debate is over the meaning of a phrase which was translated as "crushed grains". The original discoverers believed that this referred to rolled oats and when the recipe was carried out the result was indeed a passable flapjack. However, on another inspection it has been discovered that if flour is used for the "crushed grains" in the recipe, then a delicious shortbread results.
Re:Heliocentric as well ... (Score:4, Insightful)
In short, I stand corrected on both the pope and the evolution comment, and am willing to serve as an example of just how powerfull myths can be.
Re:Most Advanced? (Score:2, Insightful)
Democracy, structured standing armed forces kept separate from citizens, the concepts of Senate, Rule of law (although it favored citizens than slaves), engineering (they made bridge engineers stand under the bridges they built when soldiers were crossing to make sure it withstood them), navy, Predecessor to English, the court system, the Police (why do you think we call them cops now).
If we lived under a Roman Republic now, am sure we would built bases on Moon and colonized Mars instead of struggling in Iraq.
oh and osama would never have had b*lls to attack, knowing well he would hung by his....