The Antikythera mechanism

[Paroxysm]

I love stuff like this! The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator that was found in 1901 in a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

I find it really amazing that they made devices like this in 87.BC

 

[SuBe]

There is a video about it. Some time re-created it digitally to see how it works. It is an amazing piece of technology for the time. It out paces almost all tech for atleast 1500 years.

 

[Paroxysm]

I wonder what other complex mechanical devices existed in those times?

 

[wiegeabo]

Didn't they come to the conclusion that it was an astronomical calculator?

 

[SuBe]

It was. I was able to tell seasons, lunar months, predict planet placements, and keep track of Olympic Games and several local games.

 

[ChickenScratch]

There was a whole episode of Ancient Discoveries on History Channel about it. And yes, there was a lot of advanced technology back then lost to time with the fall of Rome, the burning down of the library of Alexandria, the crusades. Heck, many historians say we lost 1000 years of development to the dark ages due in large part to religion having a strangle hold on education.

 

[The Battousai]

There was a whole episode of Ancient Discoveries on History Channel about it. And yes, there was a lot of advanced technology back then lost to time with the fall of Rome, the burning down of the library of Alexandria, the crusades. Heck, many historians say we lost 1000 years of development to the dark ages due in large part to religion having a strangle hold on education.

Yep

There were designs for a type of steam engine in the Library, for one.

 

[Paroxysm]

Yep

There were designs for a type of steam engine in the Library, for one.

I remember reading something about that?

They also had vending machines!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vending_machine

The first recorded reference to a vending machine is found in the work of Hero of Alexandria, a first-century engineer and mathematician. His machine accepted a coin and then dispensed a fixed amount of holy water.[1][2] When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve.

 

[The Battousai]

...and that's awesome

 

[ChickenScratch]

Yep

There were designs for a type of steam engine in the Library, for one.

Yup, there was the first steam engine called the "steam ball" if I remember correctly. There was also the Archimedes Screw which pumped water upward without power! Imagine that back then? There's a whole bunch of amazing technology and developments that got stomped out for a number of reasons, christianity and the crusades didn't help the situation at all either since if you were gonna read or study it had to be bible related back then ... or die.

 

[AndThePickles]

Wow, that is incredibly cool. In some ways, I wonder if a lot of ancient civilizations were even "smarter" than we are today. They had less to work with, that's for sure.

 

[The Battousai]

I don't think they were smarter, but it would clearly be arrogant for someone to say they were less intelligent for being around before modern civilization.

Our society would clearly have been aeons ahead of where we are now if we had never lost such a wealth of information so long ago and had to re-discover it.