Apparently the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus hit shelves today, giving purpose to the lives of people who have enough free time to sleep outside an Apple store. I love Apple products, like I would die for my still-functioning 6-year-old iMac, but when it comes to phones I’m more of a “wait until [insert your favourite provider of mobile telephones] offers it for 99 cents with a 2-year contract” type of purchaser. Speaking of technology, are you aware of the Antikythera Mechanism? It is sometimes called the world’s first analog computer with the oldest known complex gear mechanism ever found. It’s more ancient than the iPhone 5. It was on a Roman ship that sank near the remote island of Antikythera around 60 BC. The wreck was found in April 1900, when a group of Greek sponge divers retrieved a number of artifacts, including bronze and marble statues, pottery, unique glassware, jewelry, coins, and 82 fragments of the mechanism itself. The items were transferred to the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens for storage and analysis. The mechanism itself went unnoticed for two years until an archaeologist recognised its significance. Designed around 100-150 BC, the complexity of the mechanism’s technology did not appear again until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe. Today a reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism is on display at the museum.
Antikythera Mechanism – National Museum of Archaeology in Athens
