The Meaning of Antikythera

Tomorrow, May 17, marks the anniversary of the discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism in 1901. The Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed a bronze gear embedded in a chunk of rock recovered from a Roman-era shipwreck near the island of Antikythera. It proved to be part of an incredibly advanced piece of clockwork machinery, the sort of thing Europe did not produce again until the Renaissance.

Nobody was quite sure what the thing was supposed to do until the 1950s, when British historian Derek deSolla Price proposed that it was an astronomical computer. Since then, the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project has been steadily working to uncover the device's secrets. You can even download an emulator which mimics how scientists believe the Mechanism worked.

I'm more interested in what the Antikythera Mechanism reveals about scientific and technological progress. To wit, it isn't inevitable. In 100 B.C. the Greek technicians of Rhodes could build a portable analog computer capable of tracking the Moon and planets. It rivaled Renaissance era clockwork. So why didn't every Roman city have a clock in the forum? Why didn't Roman bureaucrats use mechanical calculators to keep track of tribute? Why didn't anyone use this cool stuff?

The short answer is that they didn't want it badly enough. Technology isn't just a matter of what a society knows how to do, or can afford to do. It's also a matter of what the society wants to do. The Romans and Greeks could make mechanical devices, they just chose to do other stuff -- and thereby missed out on the advantages which mechanization could provide.

Oh, and it appears that NASA is disposing of the tooling and equipment used to build the Space Shuttle orbiters.

Not that I'm trying to draw any analogies here, you understand . . .

Comments

[Dave*]

My personal theory is that the workings of the Antikythera were a trade secret, probably known to a handful of people. You know how in every company there's a guy of who is said "Bob knows (X) inside and out. If he ever got hit by a bus, I don't know what we'd do."? Well, seafaring is a dangerous trade, and eventually Bob got hit by a bus or eaten by a shark or seduced by sirens, etc..

For me the lesson is to make sure intellectual property laws aren't too tight.

-D*

[Diego Nabaes]

i´m an student sailing a bit. curiously i ´ve found you. were are you from??? yo vivo en el sur del sur.:)