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"From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Terracotta Army, ancient artifacts have long fascinated the modern world. However, the importance of some discoveries is not always immediately understood. This was the case in 1901 when sponge divers retrieved a lump of corroded bronze from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near the Greek island of Antikythera. Little did the divers know they had found the oldest known analog computer in the world, an astonishing device that once simulated the motions of the stars and planets as they were understood by ancient Greek astronomers. Its remains now consist of 82 fragments, many of them containing gears and plates engraved with Greek words, that scientists and scholars have pieced back together through painstaking inspection and deduction, aided by radiographic tools and surface imaging. More than a century after its discovery, many of the secrets locked in this mysterious device can now be revealed. In addition to chronicling the unlikely discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism, author Alexander Jones takes readers through a discussion of how the device worked, how and for what purpose it was created, and why it was on a ship that wrecked off the Greek coast around 60 BC. What the Mechanism has uncovered about Greco-Roman astronomy and scientific technology, and their place in Greek society, is truly amazing. The mechanical know-how that it embodied was more advanced than anything the Greeks were previously thought capable of, but the most recent research has revealed that its displays were designed so that an educated layman could understand the behavior of astronomical phenomena, and how intertwined they were with one's natural and social environment. It was at once a masterpiece of machinery as well as one of the first portable teaching devices. Written by a world-renowned expert on the Mechanism, A Portable Cosmos will fascinate all readers interested in ancient history, archaeology, and the history of science"--
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Subjects
Greek Calendar, Science, Antiquities, Ancient Astronomy, Intellectual life, Antikythera mechanism (Ancient calculator), Technology, History, Astronomy, ancient, Calendar, greek, Science, europe, Greece, intellectual life, Greece, antiquities, Astronomy, 39.01 history of astronomy, HISTORY, Ancient, GreecePlaces
Antikythēra Island (Greece), GreeceTimes
To 1500, To 146 B.C.Showing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
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1
Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World
2019, Oxford University Press, Incorporated
in English
0190931493 9780190931490
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2
Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World
2017, Oxford University Press, Incorporated
in English
0190618582 9780190618582
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WorldCat
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3
A portable cosmos: revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, scientific wonder of the ancient world
2017
in English
019973934X 9780199739349
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Classifications
The Physical Object
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- Created July 19, 2019
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