The antikythera mechanism was a hundred years older than they thought

    The device, which can be called the first analog computer, turned out to be older than scientists had previously expected. The Babylonian records of solar eclipses indicate that the Antikythera mechanism began to be used in 205 BC. Prior to this, it was believed that it was created in 100-150 BC. It's time to edit the Wikipedia article .

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    To determine the year 205, the scientists were helped by the inscriptions on the device - more than 2000 characters, as well as a comparison of the data on the dial with the known dates of solar eclipses in the past, which were calculated by the ancient Greeks. It was previously believed that they predicted the position of planets and eclipses based on trigonometry, but in 205 it was not there. Instead, the mechanism worked on the basis of Babylonian mathematics.. Scientists continue to search for the remaining parts of the Antikythera mechanism at the shipwreck, where the device was first found.

    At the moment, it is known that the mechanism consisted of 37 bronze gears in a wooden case. Only 30 gears survived. The mechanism has been studied and tried to reconstruct since 1951. The computing device was able to take into account the ellipticity of the orbit of the moon's motion using a sinusoidal correction, for which a gear wheel with a shifted center of rotation was used.

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    The scheme of the mechanism.

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    Reconstruction of the 1980 mechanism.

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