World's Oldest Computer Is Really Old

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the "world's oldest computer," is even older than previously thought, according to researchers.

The remarkable astronomical mechanism was discovered in 1901 amongst the wreckage of a Greek ship believed to have sunk sometime between 85 B.C. and 60 B.C., near the island of Antikythera between Crete and Greece.

Since its discovery, scholars have marveled at the Antikythera Mechanism, given that its origin appears to predate other devices of equal complexity by as much as a millennium or more, as noted by The New York Times.

"The complex clocklike assembly of bronze gears and display dials predates other known examples of similar technology by more than 1,000 years. It accurately predicted lunar and solar eclipses, as well as solar, lunar and planetary positions," the Times described the ancient mechanism, which measures just about 8 inches across.

Previous estimates placed the mechanism's construction at around 125 B.C., but new research pushes that date back further, to 205 B.C., according to Christián Carman of Argentina's National University of Quilmes and James Evans of the University of Puget Sound.

In a paper appearing in the Archive for History of Exact Science, Carman and Evans describe how they arrived at the new date. They began by comparing the "hundreds of ways that the Antikythera's eclipse patterns could fit Babylonian records" reconstructed by Brown University's John Steele, Evans said in an article published by the University of Puget Sound. By process of elimination, the researchers concluded that 205 B.C. was the likeliest date for the mechanism's construction.

Carman and Evans said their work was made more difficult by the fact that "only about a third of the Antikythera's eclipse predictor is preserved." The mechanism began falling apart immediately after it was brought to the surface back in 1901, as described in the video below.

In recent years, computer-aided scanning and analysis techniques have made it possible to digitally reconstruct the Antikythera Mechanism with what scientists believe is great accuracy. This has paved the way for a number of new theories about its origins and capabilities.