The Englishman built a model of the sphere of Archimedes



    Mention of mechanical models of the vault of heaven can be found in the works of several ancient authors. Typically, such models are associated with Archimedes. The earliest mention of such a model is found in the dialogue of the Roman author Marcus Tullius Cicero , created in the first century BC. One of the characters in the dialogue describes how the Roman general Mark Claudius Marcellus attacked the house of Archimedes in Syracuse in 212 BC. In the course of this attack, Archimedes himself was killed, and the general took one single thing - the sphere of Archimedes.

    When the character saw the realm in action, he realized that Archimedes was the greatest genius. The model of Archimedes included the Sun, the Moon and five planets known at that time. Each of the objects moved along a certain trajectory with a certain speed.

    Historians have long believed that the description of the sphere that Cicero gave was a mere fiction. But the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism gave scientists reason to believe that the Romans and Greeks could create extremely complex mechanical systems.

    The remains of the mechanism were examined, including using x-ray tomography. The initial reconstruction of the mechanism was created by the English science historian Derek John de Solla Price. The scientist conducted an X-ray study of the mechanism and built its scheme. In 1959, he published a detailed description of the device in Scientific American magazine. A complete device diagram was introduced only in 1971 and contained 32 gears.


    Wright shows the details of his mechanism, in total there are 24 gears

    Michael Wright, a mechanical device specialist at the London Museum of Science, has undertaken a new study of the mechanism, using X-ray tomography techniques. Radiographic two-dimensional sections of the mechanism were constructed and studied. Preliminary research results were presented in 1997. They showed that there are fundamental errors in the reconstruction of Price. In particular, it was convincingly shown that the assumption of the presence of differential transmission in the mechanism does not correspond to reality. In 2002, Wright proposed his reconstruction. He confirmed the general conclusion of Price that the mechanism was used to simulate the motion of celestial bodies. According to Wright, the mechanism could simulate the movement of not only the Sun and the Moon, but also of five planets known in ancient times - Mercury, Venus, Mars,

    Now Michael Wright has built a model and spheres of Archimedes , however, in his work he used a large number of assumptions and conjectures. The mechanical model of the sphere proposed by Wright will be presented to the general public on September 27, 2015 at an exhibition in Basel, Switzerland. It is interesting that Wright made the sphere, although most modern scientists believe that the model was flat.



    The mechanical model of the Archimedes sphere created by Wright contains 24 gears, as mentioned above. The system shows the Sun and the Moon moving at a constant speed, plus planets are moving along the celestial arch.

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