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Found housed in a 340 mm × 180 mm × 90 mm wooden box, the device is a complex clockwork mechanism composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears. Its remains were found as one lump, later separated in three main fragments, which are now divided into 82 separate fragments after conservation works. Four of these fragments contain gears, while inscriptions are found on many others.
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Open Seminar: Antikythera Mechanism, the oldest known computer: How humans created the first clockwork Cosmos
Location: Greek Centre, Mezzanine, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
Date: SPECIAL SEMINAR: MONDAY 20/3/2017 @ 6:30pm (EARLY START)
Presenter: Professor Xenophon Moussas
Entry: FREE
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Synopsis
Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known computer, even originally named tablet in Greek (PINAKIDION, little table, i.e. tablet), a realistic clockwork Cosmos, a Planetarium, most probably an astronomical clock.
Made during the 2nd century BC somewhere in the Greek world. It has been found by sponge divers from Syme, in a huge shipwreck of the 1st century BC in the island of Antikythera. It was a floating museum probably larger than 50 m full of Greek treasures transported to Rome. It works with carefully designed bronze gears that perform appropriate mathematical operations to predict astronomical phenomena.
It displays the position of the Sun and the Moon in a map of the sky, the phase of the Moon, the time of solar and lunar eclipses and the places these are visible on Earth. It probably worked like a cuckoo clock, with a system of weights and counterweights and a water clock as regulator.
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Bio
Professor Xenophon Moussas (University of Athens) is one of the protagonists of the study of the oldest known computer and clockwork cosmos of the 2nd century BC, the Antikythera Mechanism. A space physicist, with research interests including space and solar physics, planetology, Ulysses mission, WIND/WAVES and STEREO space mission, Solar Orbiter.
He has supervised 25 PhDs. Awards include: NASA group achievement, Ulysses Mission, 2009, Geophysical Research Letters excellence in refereeing, American Geophysical Union2001, Hipparchus award, Arcadia, Athens, 2010. Created exhibitions about the Antikythera Mechanism around the world
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Sponsors
We thank the following donor: Anonymous, Christos Tsirkas, Panagiota Stamatopoulou.
During the course of the year considerable expenses are incurred in staging the seminars. In order to mitigate these costs individuals or organisations are invited to donate against a lecture of their choice.
You too can donate for one or more seminars and (optionally) let your name or brand be known as a patron of culture to our members, visitors and followers, as well as the broader artistic and cultural community of Melbourne. Please email: info@greekcommunity.com.au or call 03 9662 2722.
We also thank the following corporate sponsor:
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