World’s oldest computer resurrected after 2,000 years
December 15th, 2008
It has no hard drive, no peripherals, and won’t run Windows Vista. But that doesn’t mean that the Antikythera Mechanism is anything less than incredible. The 2,000-year-old computer was discovered on an Ancient Greek shipwreck 100 years ago, and thanks to miracles of modern science (including X-ray and gamma radiographs used to probe its hidden mechanics), a working replica has been built. The mechanism predicts the positions and phases of heavenly bodies such as the sun, moon, and planets, and was used for navigation.
Please let someone produce working replicas for sale!
Hat tip to James Randerson at the Guardian Science Blog
Entry Filed under: Awesome Science Videos
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4 Comments
1. jdc | December 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
\"…won’t run Windows Vista…\"
Heh – neither will my PC.
2. Leroy | December 16th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Beautiful. Simply beautiful…
…so it’s clearly a 2000-year-old Mac…
3. BioTronic | December 16th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
But is it Turing-complete? :p
4. Abril "vinyl fabrics" Ward | January 6th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Good that someone kept a computer for 100 years…
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