On the Antikythera mechanism. A familiar name appears: Parmenides may be the source for the measurements of two planets in this analog computer that models the Cosmos.
Russo's book The Forgotten Revolution is quite interesting. Interlibrary loan is your friend--it is quite expensive. A physicist who is also a classics scholar reviews the evidence and finds that Hellenist technology was quite sophisticated--how does one make certain optical instruments w/o reproducible screws, for example? There's a sample chapter (Hellenistic Mathematics) in the readings here. It hadn't occurred to me before that their preference for compass and straightedge was for their ideal calculator, and that much of the constructive proofs showed how calculations could be done.
It's pretty wild that we have all these modern technological marvels and super computers and something invented several thousand years ago like the Antikythera Mechanism could predict the movement of the planets and phases of the moon is as accurate as anything we have today.
The same thing could be said for the Mayan Calendar and possibly for the Abacus as well, although the Abacus was only good for the simple maths.
The article E Hines cites says it wasn't as accurate as modern techniques. I wouldn't expect it to be--it was clockwork, after all, and had to approximate the ratios involved using integral numbers of gear teeth.
Abstract: The author analyzes the placement of the mechanism's gear teeth. Mathematical models of gear train accuracy are provided, with the author noting the standard deviations in the trains. Because of the gear errors present in the Mechanism, the author concludes that it was probably used more for display or education purposes than for actual astronomical calculation.
The science article itself--fairly technical--is here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w
Eric Hines
Russo's book The Forgotten Revolution is quite interesting. Interlibrary loan is your friend--it is quite expensive. A physicist who is also a classics scholar reviews the evidence and finds that Hellenist technology was quite sophisticated--how does one make certain optical instruments w/o reproducible screws, for example?
ReplyDeleteThere's a sample chapter (Hellenistic Mathematics) in the readings here. It hadn't occurred to me before that their preference for compass and straightedge was for their ideal calculator, and that much of the constructive proofs showed how calculations could be done.
It's pretty wild that we have all these modern technological marvels and super computers and something invented several thousand years ago like the Antikythera Mechanism could predict the movement of the planets and phases of the moon is as accurate as anything we have today.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing could be said for the Mayan Calendar and possibly for the Abacus as well, although the Abacus was only good for the simple maths.
The article E Hines cites says it wasn't as accurate as modern techniques. I wouldn't expect it to be--it was clockwork, after all, and had to approximate the ratios involved using integral numbers of gear teeth.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/252740767_An_Initial_Assessment_of_the_Accuracy_of_the_Gear_Trains_in_the_Antikythera_Mechanism
Abstract: The author analyzes the placement of the mechanism's gear teeth. Mathematical models of gear train accuracy are provided, with the author noting the standard deviations in the trains. Because of the gear errors present in the Mechanism, the author concludes that it was probably used more for display or education purposes than for actual astronomical calculation.