Betting is big business in the United Kingdom, so it’s probably not too surprising for you to hear that they’ve rebuilt a 2000-year-old computer which was used for predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games. Comes in handy when determining the odds.
A rather genius British museum curator has built a working replica of the dictionary-size Antikythera mechanism of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock. In 1901, a group of sponge divers found parts of the ancient computer in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete.
Interested? Check out this video by NewScientist for the full story.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfMFhrgOFc]
By the way, the machine.. is green. It’s constructed of recycled metal plates – just like the original version.
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