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View Full Version : Apple engineer uses Lego to rebuild ancient Greek mechanism



MasterKiller
12-10-2010, 01:32 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk&feature=player_embedded

The Antikythera Mechanism is what you call truly old school technology. Argued to be the world's oldest known computer, this ancient Greek invention was used some time circa 100BC to calculate and "predict celestial events and eclipses with unprecedented accuracy." Skipping past the two millennia in which it lay lost on a sea floor somewhere, the Mechanism has now been recreated by an Apple software engineer by the name of Andrew Carol, who has lovingly pieced 1,500 Lego Technic blocks together, creating 110 gears and four gearboxes in total. Each box is responsible for performing one piece of arithmetic, and when the resulting machine is fed with appropriate calendar data, it spits out a (hopefully accurate) prediction for the next time a solar eclipse should occur. All well and good, but we're really just amazed by the beauty of those gears working. Check them out after the break.

Syn7
12-10-2010, 05:31 PM
very cool... i studied the antikythera mechanism a few years back... what is truly fascinating isnt the machine itself, but how they came up with the figures to calibrate... i mean this thing was first built in 100 bce or so... maybe even older, although we cant prove that... but its atleast 2100 years old.... the one recovered in the shipwreckage, that is...