The First Calculator?

pretty amazing stuff. according to the article, a mechanical device made in the 2nd century BC displayed a level of sophistication no one knew exitsted in the anchient world, until now. its level of technology was only surpased 1000 years later! i find this fascinating becasue its almost unfathomable where we would be today if the romans had continued the emphasis on innovation. its like we lost 1000 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/astronomy_calculator_dc

That IS amazing. But where do the batteries go ?

Cliff

tygger said:

pretty amazing stuff. according to the article, a mechanical device made in the 2nd century BC displayed a level of sophistication no one knew exitsted in the anchient world, until now. its level of technology was only surpased 1000 years later! i find this fascinating becasue its almost unfathomable where we would be today if the romans had continued the emphasis on innovation. its like we lost 1000 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/astronomy_calculator_dc

Click to expand...

Yes we did lose 1000 years (or more...): it was called the Dark Ages!

I heard quite a long piece about this on National Public Radio. The 'mechanical calculator' could actually predict solar eclipses!

Hard to believe from such an ancient device! And it was all based on empirical data, translated into what must have been incredibly well machined gears and other mechanical parts!

That is extremely sophisticated and was probably very useful for navigation, but if all you wanted to do was addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and roots (ie simple calculations), the abacus predated it by some 800 years.

Still in service today in Asia and Africa, and by the blind.

Very interesting, but it probably wasn't the first. This thing couldn't have come from nowhere. It seems likely that there were other similar things made, and they too were made of brass.

Brass was valuable and the theory is that during the dark ages all the others were melted and the brass re-used. This one survived because it was lost at sea at the bottom of the mediterranean.

It makes me wonder how much history has been lost permanently. If it wasn't for the shipwreck, we would have never suspected such things existed. I guess if you are a historian, shipwrecks are a good thing.