Antikythera Mechanism

[Jona Lendering]

A nice video here

[Epictetus]

I want one!

[M. Demetrius]

Astonishing.

[caiusbeerquitius]

Great!
There are also these two:
[url:3buklpt1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiQSHiAYt98[/url]
[url:3buklpt1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znM0-arQvHc&feature=channel[/url]

[D B Campbell]

Isn't Lego wonderful?

(I once offered them some ideas for a Roman range, but they seemed to prefer Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter. I understand that. Who on earth would buy Lego Romans?!)

[richsc]

Not buy Lego Romans? I have a whole collection of Playschool Romans.

[Sean Manning]

Before I passed them on, I had a large collection of Lego pirates (with soldiers and sailors for them to fight) and knights. I never got into the techniks which let you build things like this though. Isn't it marvelous that we can make things like this with toys?

[M. Demetrius]

Don't think of them as toys, since in this context, they're "multiple-direction connecting pieces for scientific modelling". The old Erector Sets were like that, until they were banned (since silly children could eat the nuts and bolts)

[Q Rutilius]

Erector sets have been banned? That does it!The world has officially gone to hell!

[M. Demetrius]

No, they still make a version of it, I think (my use of banned is a bit of an over reaction), but the originals had lots of brass pulleys and gears with setscrews, spindles, axles, tiny nuts, bolts and washers (along with a small screwdriver and wrench), rods of several sizes, and different lengths of building girders, swivels, bushings, etc. There was not a speck of plastic in the whole box. But someone somewhere decided that children could swallow many of the smaller parts, and might choke on the medium sized ones, so they changed things around to be safe. I guess kids in the old days were smart enough to figure out, "Hmm. This is metal. It's not food. Where's the cookies?" Now we must all be protected, so we forgot how to think.

[richsc]

Actually, in the old days kids did get injured and killed, but there was no way to accumulate the reports. The water wiggle was only pulled from market after several children drowned with the u joint jammed down their throats. Not a pleasant sight, the guys at CPSC told me. So yes, probably there were a lot of problems with erector sets.

[Robert Vermaat]

It looks nice, but the claims are as usual fantastic.
An 'exact replica"? No-one seems to be able to even tell how many gears it had. Plus, the LEGO version has twice as many gears, so how can it be a replica?
'Unprecedentted accuracy'? I hope they are not serious.
A 'computer'? It's not: it's an astrolabe - it does not computer anything.

I think it's a nice enough device for a LEGO contraption, but since we have not been able to build an exact replica of the Antikythera mechanism, it's impossible to make claims about what it did, could do and how well it did that. My guess would also be astronomical use (which seems likely), but we can't be sure, can we? it's never been taken apart and rebuilt. The rest is (informed) speculation) I think.

http://www.badarchaeology.net/data/oopa ... ythera.php