The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”

This thing is super cool - a 2000 year old computer 1000 years ahead of its time. A Special David Dworin Online Internet Honor goes to the first person to build one out of Lego, and a Double Bonus Honor if it uses Lego Mindstorms to improve on the original.

After reading the NYTimes article and a recent visit to the field museum, Stephen Dubner at the Freakonomics Blog is wondering about technology that’s ahead of its time, noting how often major scientific discoveries were found centuries apart. I think there are two explanations for why science has such gaps. First, it wasn’t really until the enlightenment that there was a general consensus around the scientific method, which means for millenia, scientists weren’t even all speaking the same language, and didn’t have the same set of standards. Once the rules of the game became standardized, things started moving quicker.

Beyond that, though, it wasn’t even until recently that communication technology was amenable to the wide scale dissemination of ideas. The writings of the Greek Philosophers survived in hand copied volumes, mostly in the Arab World (because they were destroyed in the west), meaning few had access to them. Since communication over time and distance was expensive, the notion that large groups of scientists would collaborate, as they do now, was out of the question. Science has progressed so rapidly in the modern era because it is so easy for scientists to communicate, collaborate, and document their findings, increasing the number of brilliant minds that can tackle the same problem.

Categories: Science