For those of us interested in the history of computing....
An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/john_noble_wilford/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Published: November 29, 2006 The New York Times ...a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C. The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world's first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/science/30computecnd.html?hp&ex=1164862800&en=d7d28d698786f28d&ei=5094&part ner=homepage) (If anyone subscribes to NATURE, I would appreciate the complete letter/article.) -- tj ========================================== J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- Buckminster Fuller ==========================================
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