Scientists Unravel Mystery of Ancient Machine
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS, AP
ATHENS, Greece (Dec. 1) – Imagine tossing a top-notch laptop into the sea, leaving scientists from a foreign culture to scratch their heads over its corroded remains centuries later.
A Roman shipmaster inadvertently did something just like that 2,000 years ago off southern Greece, experts said Thursday.
They claim to have identified a handful of puzzling metal scraps found in a ship wreck as the earliest known mechanical computing device, which pinpointed astronomical events.
A team including British, Greek and U.S. scientists used specially developed X-ray scanning and imaging technology to analyze the corroded bronze, revealing hidden machinery and a form of written user’s manual.
“We have used the latest technology available to understand this mechanism, yet the technological quality in this mechanism puts us to shame,” project leader Mike Edmunds, professor of astronomy at Cardiff University. “If the ancient Greeks made this, what else could they do?”
The full article can be read here.
Many things of the ancient people are very curious…if you think about that,near 95% of our society is build with things discovered in the last 300 years.We have the force of numbers:we have more scientist now than ever over the world.Probably Archimedes was one of the most brilliant minds,but he was ALONE,and probably for that reason his designs are lost.
“If the ancient Greeks made this, what else could they do?”
Build a chess computer?
Gabor
When their version of Fritz got so good it beat the hell out of everybody else, it was thrown into the sea. Oh, remember not to tell that to DF10…it might allow a mate in 1 😉
It is nice to see such links indeed.
But this Romulan Star-Tracking cheating device used in Dead-Reckoning games could never beat the Wiking ships in sailing home to harbor.
In case you do not believe me;
– Just ask Bobby Fisher.
He knows how to hit Island instead of stranding in Amerika.
(no offence to you, dear Susan)
Man in symbiosis with Machine is more
interesting than “Man against Machine”
I like to read about computing machines, from beancounting machines
in the abacus era trough the finemechanical era reaching its hight with Charles Babage and Ada, the countess of Lovelace.
Please note that the first real computer programmer was a Girl!
Then we had the electomechanics with Zuzes and Booles algebras.
Then a short wartime Vacumtube and our own Transistor era followed.
What’s up next?
Personally i have asked Santa for a Quantumcomputter. Such a machine if knowing the rules of chess will immeadetly know all posititions and possibilities solving the whole game
in no time at all.
—
Chess Skill in Man and Machine by Peter W. Frey is a book to look trough before you start reading more.