The Gearwork Prophets - Part 1: The Antikythera Mechanism: The First Analog Computer
The Gearwork Prophets: Mechanical Minds Before the Machine Age 1 The Gearwork Prophets - Part 1: The Antikythera Mechanism: The First Analog Computer 2 The Gearwork Prophets - Part 2: South-Pointing Chariot: The Inertial Guidance System 3 The Gearwork Prophets - Part 3: Heron’s Automation: Steam Engines & Holy Water Vending Machines 4 The Gearwork Prophets - Part 4: Archimedes' Mechanical Planetariums 5 The Gearwork Prophets - Part 5: Zhang Heng’s Seismoscope: The First Earthquake Detector ← Series Home The Clockwork Universe Found in Corroded Bronze In 1900, sponge divers working off a Greek island retrieved a lump of corroded bronze from an ancient Roman shipwreck. For decades, this unassuming mass sat unrecognized in museum storage, its true nature concealed by fragile, hardened layers of decay. Only when researchers began painstaking analysis, employing advanced techniques like CT scanning, did the staggering truth emerge: this was not scrap metal, but a complex clockwork device of profound ingenuity. Dating to approximately 100 BCE, this artifact, now known as the Antikythera Mechanism, housed an internal mechanical mind that physically simulated the cosmos. Its very existence forces modern historians to fundamentally reassess the technological ceiling of the ancient world. ...