Ancient Astronomical Calculator

In 1901, sponge divers salvaged a corroded artifact from an ancient Roman shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikýthēra. The item has now been identified as an amazingly sophisticated, second-century-B.C.E. astronomical calculator.

Scientists who recently studied the “Antikythera Mechanism” using high-resolution X-ray tomography found that it was composed of at least 30 bronze gear wheels, originally housed in a wooden case. The device could accurately track the positions of the sun and the moon and predict lunar and solar eclipses. According to Nature magazine, the mechanism is “technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards.”