The Antikythera Mechanism: The Computer at the Bottom of the Sea
From History, Give or Take · 10:30
Show by Ember Ventures
In 1900, Greek sponge divers sheltering from a storm off the small island of Antikythera found the wreck of an ancient ship. Among the statues and treasures they brought up was a lump of corroded bronze that nobody paid much attention to. Inside it were gears.More than two thousand years old, the Antikythera mechanism is a hand-cranked device that tracked the sun and moon, predicted eclipses, and even counted down to the Olympic Games. Nothing like it appears again for well over a thousand years. This episode follows its discovery, the century of detective work it took to read it, and what it tells us about ancient Greek science. We also sort the record from the legend, including what "ancient computer" really means and the wilder theories about who made it.Created with the assistance of AI, using an AI model of the host's voice, and checked against the historical record.
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