Which go in the direction that may be Archimedes could have found, or
that greeks would have emit much earlier, a Church-Turing thesis, and
that without the stopping of science/theology by the Roman Christians,
the whole of computer science could have been born much earlier. But
in occident, science and theology stopped at +500, and we entered the
dark age, and we are still in there, now. And if we continue to be
blind on what happens in the Middle-East, and elsewhere, we might well
stay in the dark for one more millenium.
Well, to be sure, we don't have evidence that the antikythera
mechanism is authentically Turing universal, but it is sure that it is
close. Very impressive discovery.
Bruno
On 05 Dec 2014, at 05:48, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
For those who get into this kind of stuff.
http://www.gizmag.com/antikythera-mechanism-date/35016/
World's oldest computer may be older than previously thought
By David Szondy
December 4, 2014
3 Comments
The Antikythera Mechanism is the world's oldest computer (Photo:
Giovanni Dall Orto)
Since its discovery over a century ago, the Antikythera Mechanism
has had scholars scratching their heads over how the Greeks managed
to build a mechanical computer a hundred years before the birth of
Christ and thousands of years before anything similar. But now
things have become even stranger as researchers claim that it's over
a hundred years older than previously believed and may have been
built by a famous hand.
The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in 1901 by sponge divers
off the Greek island of Antikythera. At first, not much was made of
it, but after the coral-encrusted, corroded mass of bronze gears was
later studied using x-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons, and then
reconstructed, it turned out to be something astonishing.
The device at first was thought to be some sort of surprisingly
early clock, but then it turned out to be the oldest computer known.
In fact it was an analog astronomical computer based on the
principle of the differential calculator that uses gear trains as a
way of performing complex calculations. On further study, the device
proved capable of calculating, among other things, the position of
the planets, sidereal time, and eclipses.
And all of this by using technology that was never realized to exist
in the ancient world and after it vanished, didn't reappear until
the 14th century. Even today the device sparks interest as the
design is adapted to not only museum exhibits, but also watches.
First reported in the New York Times, the new date for the
Antikythera Mechanism is the result of work by James Evans,
professor of physics at University of Puget Sound, and Christián
Carman, history of science professor at University of Quilmes,
Argentina.
The new date is based on a reconstruction of the device made by John
Steele of Brown University in 2008. This involved matching the
calculations against Babylonian eclipse records and applying an
analysis that took into account lunar and solar anomalies, solar
eclipses, and lunar and solar eclipses cycles that might have been
missing and other inaccuracies – not the least of which might have
been caused by the fact that much of the device was never salvaged.
By a process of elimination, Evans and Carman eliminated hundreds of
eclipse patterns until a match was found that placed the earliest
eclipse on the device matching the year 205 BC. According to the
researchers, such a date not only places the manufacturing date
perhaps a hundred years earlier than the previous date of about 100
BC, but also indicates that the mathematics used to design the
device were derived from Babylonian methods rather than Greek
trigonometry, which did not exist at that time.
The researchers also put forward another tantalizing possibility
opened by the new date. According to Cicero, there was a story that
a device much like the one found at Antikythera was made by
Archimedes and captured by the Roman general Marcellus after the
sack of Syracuse and the death of Archimedes in 212 BC. It is
remotely possible that it and the Antikythera Mechanism may be one
and the same. The researchers emphasize that the correlation is
conjectural, but it does suggest that the age of the device is not
only now known, but that a famous name can be given to its maker.
The results were published in the Archive for History of Exact
Science.
Source: University of Puget Sound
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