The First Computer

Three flat misshapen pieces of oxidized bronze that now rest at the National Archeological Museum of Athens, Greece, have been called the world's first computer. It spent the last 2000 years under the sea. Look closely and you will find gears with neat triangular teeth and a ring divided into degrees of the circle. Nothing like it will appear again for 1000 years. With amazing accuracy, the device was meant to track the motions of the sun, moon, and planets. Similar in sizer to a mantel clock, the Antikythera Mechanism has trains of interlocking gear wheels that drive at least seven hands (sun, moon, and the 7 planets visible to the naked eye) at various speeds to mark celestial time. It also featured ways to mark phases of the moon, the calendar, and the timing of lunar and solar eclipses. Cicero wrote that a Rhodes philosopher Posidonis made a similar model of the heavens in the first century BC, and some have suggested that such items originated as much as 200 years earlier in Babylon. How was such knowledge transmitted to the sailors of the Mediterranean down through the centuries if another such device wasn't readily available? By the time of our stories, such information was 1300 to 1400 years old. Merchants and sailors may have relied on this ancient knowledge without knowing where it came from.