Antikythera mechanism

Antikythera mechanism, ancient Greek mechanical device used to calculate and display information about astronomical phenomena. The remains of this ancient “computer,” now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, were recovered in 1901 from the wreck of a trading ship that sank in the first half of the 1st century bce near the island of Antikythera in the Mediterranean Sea. Its manufacture is currently dated to 100 bce, give or take 30 years.

The Antikythera mechanism had the first known set of scientific dials or scales, and its importance was recognized when radiographic images showed that the remaining fragments contained 30 gear wheels. No other geared mechanism of such complexity is known from the ancient world or indeed until medieval cathedral clocks were built a millennium later.

The Antikythera mechanism was fabricated out of bronze sheet, and originally it would have been in a case about the size of a shoebox. The doors of the case and the faces of the mechanism are covered with Greek inscriptions, enough of which survive to indicate clearly much of the device’s astronomical, or calendrical, purpose. It is believed that a hand-turned shaft (now lost) was connected by a crown gear to the main gear wheel, which drove the further gear trains, with each revolution of the main gear wheel corresponding to one solar year. On the front of the mechanism is a large dial with pointers for showing the position of the Sun and the Moon in the zodiac and a half-silvered ball for displaying lunar phases. The drive train for the lunar position is extremely sophisticated, involving epicyclic gearing and a slot-and-pin mechanism to mimic subtle variations (known as the “first anomaly”) in the Moon’s motion across the sky. (See Hipparchus and Ptolemaic system.)

Two large dials are on the back of the mechanism. The large upper dial has a five-turn spiral slot with a moving pointer to show the 235 lunations, or synodic months, in the Metonic cycle. This cycle is almost exactly 19 years long and is useful in regulating calendars. A subsidiary four-year dial showed when the various Panhellenic games should take place, including the ancient Olympic Games. The large lower dial has a four-turn spiral with symbols to show months in which there was a likelihood of a solar or lunar eclipse, based on the 18.2-year saros eclipse cycle. These astronomical cycles would have been known to the Greeks from Babylonian sources. The inscriptions imply that there may originally have been a display of planetary positions, most likely on the front face, but nearly all the relevant parts are missing.

The Antikythera mechanism is the only known physical survivor of a long tradition of mechanical astronomical displays. The widespread existence of such devices can be inferred from references in Greco-Roman literature, particularly in the descriptions left by Marcus Tullius Cicero (1st century bce), that stretch from Archimedes (3rd century bce) to a poetic reference in the late 4th or early 5th century ce. The exact purpose of the Antikythera mechanism remains speculative, however. Nor is it known if the bronze-geared technology and the advanced mechanical design skills involved in its construction were exploited for other applications within the Greco-Roman world.

The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, under the aegis of Greece’s Hellenic Ministry of Culture, supports an international collaborative effort by academic researchers to study the Antikythera mechanism.