The Antikythera Mechanism Episode 11 – Inscribing the Back Plate – Part 1

This is a new episode after more than a year. :)

I highly recommend this serie of videos about building a reconstruction of the The Antikythera Mechanism with tool similar to the ancient tools. [Warning: It's a huge time sink] Complete playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...

The amount of skill shown in the videos is incredibly mind-boggling. One wrong move and you're starting over on the entire part, which would be bad enough using modern tools he's using now and I can't even imagine what it must have been like at the time when the mechanism was designed. What a marvel of engineering considering the time it was made. Makes me wonder what other ancient inventions were out there that we'll never know anything about.

Went to Athens last month and saw the mechanism (a replica) in person in one of the museums. Overall, for me it was a strange experience looking at the ancient Greek civilization - these people were not thinking about simple things like sustenance or other basic needs. They were very much involved in improving their minds in any way possible - democracy, arts, science. All that time they spent on improving their civilization in every way got me thinking of all the time we lose today in meaningless stuff like social media, or looking selfishly at the world and other people.

There was no patent protection back in these days. A smart craftsman could not draw on recorded repositories of past work and if he came up with a new design, anyone could copy it and sell in competition. Some worked there way into general use, but as far as I know there was never a 'next generation' in most cases. The innovator kept it totally secret. So a machine that, say, pitted olives, could make a man rich as bought olives and pitted them with his machine and sold the pitted olives. Other people had to pit them with sharp sticks or whatever. Some Roman nobles killed craftsmen who made them a good work to ensure no-one else could have one. Things stumbled along until the 1500's when Kings would grant Crown Patents so only you could make them. This gradually expanded to the modern patent system in the 1700-1800's??

Back in Greek times smart people guarded their secrets - and these were all hand made, holes drilled, bearings made, plates scribed with the workman's notes often in his head. Logically a mechanism would be made, improved, improved again etc. There may have been a dozen preceding Antikythera mechanisms on an improvement path, as well as successor machines - none of which survived to the present.

The precious nature of brass bronze meant that anyone who found would melt it to sell for weapons etc. There may be dozens more hidden under water in collapsed caves etc.??

A common sentiment when viewing something like this is "wow, they were far more sophisticated then we imagined," but it's taken me a while to think instead "we're not much more sophisticated than them.

The Clickspring guy isn't just making this replica, he's doing so using materials and tools available at the time. Several videos show him just making tools: taking simple iron and fashioning a tool like a chisel, then case hardening it and using it to make a file out of the same iron, then case hardening that so he can make drill bits. He comments several times that the quality of the basic tools, simply made, is so good that he'll continue using them sometimes in preference to buying more expensive versions.

The real point of reflection shouldn't be "we thought they were so dumb," it's "we think we're so smart."

We systematically underestimate the wisdom of the ancients.

The sophistication of that 19-year lunar cycle bespeaks centuries of noodling on the problem, to say nothing of the skill on display executing the construction.

Finally!