THE ANTIKYHERA MECHANISM
Extract
“The remnants of the Hellenistic device known as the Antikythera Mechanism were salvaged in 1900-1901 from the site of a shipwreck dated to approximately 70-50 BC, near the coast of the island of Antikythera. They lay unnoticed in the National Archeological Museum in Athens among miscellaneous bronze fragments of statuary recovered from the wreck site until May 1902, when Spyridon Stais, the former Minister of Education who had commissioned the salvage operations on the part of the Greek government, visited the museum and chanced to observe fragments of corroded metal bearing gears and inscribed texts on some of their surfaces. Since 1902 there have been three periods of active research on the Mechanism: 1902-1910 (many archeologists and other scholars), late 1920s-early 1930s (Ioannis Theofanidis), and 1953-present (Derek de Solla Price, Allan Bromley, M. T. Wright, the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, and others)”
The Antikythera Mechanism and the Public Face of Greek Science
-Alexander Jones
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University 15 East 84th Street, New York, NY 10028, USA
An Extract:
“An extraordinary mechanism was found by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea near the island of Antikythera. It astonished the whole international community of experts on the ancient world.
A new paper from the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project (AMRP) is published in the prestige science journal Nature on July 31st 2008. It reveals surprising results on the back dials of the Antikythera Mechanism
