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ANTIKYTHERA Mechanism

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Bianca
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« Reply #15 on: December 15, 2007, 07:32:20 pm »








                                            THE ANTIKYTHERA CALCULATOR

                                              (The Antikythera Mechanism)





The Calculator of Antikythera, found into a naval wreckage of the I century B.C. in the waters in front of Antikythera in the Aegean sea, is one the most amazing archaeological discoveries of last century.

The mechanism, immediately appeared out of time, after years of study is provoking a discussion among scientists and archaeologists because of the complexity and the modernity of the scientific knowledge that the work implies; the epicyclic gearing with which has been built shows the elevated level of the scientific culture reached in that period. The design of this special gear makes to suppose that Hellenistic scientists knew the calculation of the planetary motion of the celestial bodies and that the same results could have been achieved in modern times.

The mechanism is constituted of a handle operating about 32 bronze gears into a wood box, as great as a shoes box. These gears could rotate the hands of special quadrants. Perhaps it has been made in Rhodes by the astronomer Gemino or his teacher Posidonio (135-51 B.C.).

After its recovery in 1902, for fifty years it is not understood what it was. In 1951 Derek John De Solla Price (1922-1983) started, for the first time, to study the mechanism in the details also with radiographies to the gamma rays range and, after about 20 years of searches, he understood its working as an astronomic calculator.

It had the function to reproduce the lunar phases and the movement of the Sun and the Moon among the constellations of the zodiac. Probably it could also represent the motion around the Sun of the visible planets at naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). It could be used both like an instrument for the navigation and for astronomic investigations. Currently it results to be the most ancient analogical calculator of the history.

The astronomic calculator in the classical literature – The Calculator of Antikythera is the only planetarium arrived to us, but the Latin literature quotes another older one, built by Archimede in the III century B.C., also presumably with gear mechanisms.

Cicero (106-43 B.C., contemporary to the sinking of the Calculator of Antikythera) reports that, after the conquest in Syracuse in the 212 B.C., the Roman consul Marcello carried in Rome a celestial globe and a planetarium built by Archimede (287-212 B.C.): De Re Publica, I, 14, and besides also 21 and 22; Tusculanae disputationes, I, 63.

This planetarium was mentioned also by Ovidio (I sec. B.C.) in the Fasti (VI, 263-283), Lattanzio (IV sec. A.D.) in the Divinae institutiones (II, 5, 18) and in a Claudiano epigram (IV sec. A.D.) entitled In Archimedis Sphaeram. Particularly, Claudiano adds that the instrument was contained in a starry sphere of glass. Unfortunately any description detailed of the mechanisms that animated the planetarium has been saved as the work of Archimede On the construction of the Sphere, in which he described the principles adopted in the construction, has gone lost. This literary topics, however, show that the construction of these mechanisms was very diffused for centuries.
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