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2500 Year Old Computer Rebuilt with LEGO!!!
Renegade:
Feel free to crap your pants at any time... This computer is 2500 years old, and was only understood in the last few years.
And now, it has been rebuilt with LEGO!
Video from 2010, but I'm betting few people have heard of this, and would really like the LEGO angle there. :D
More info here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Kind of makes you rethink things in terms of just how "advanced" we are now. e.g. How many ancient structures can we still not build?
40hz:
Interesting disclaimer calling it a "functional replica" since it uses twice as many gears as the original device.
Why didn't they just make an exact duplicate?
Not to take away from what they did (and I love it!) but I always get a little wary of people who make claims for how advanced something was when they don't duplicate it exactly. It feels a little like fudging the numbers to me since technology is so often completely dependent on knowing one tiny factor or nonintuitive detail to make it work. If you decide to overlook that you can show a good deal of modern technology should have been known to the ancients even though there is little or no evidence to support such technologies ever had existed based purely on extant contemporary accounts of daily life. These people kept records, wrote about themselves, and can seem fairly boastful by todays standards since civic pride occupied a large part of their identity and cultural framework. When they had something - they bragged about it.
No too say it isn't a correct conclusion. But I'd still be careful about accepting the sweeping conclusions some people are making about the device.
8)
TaoPhoenix:
Quick guess with no homework - the fact it uses Legos? Legos are square thingies, so maybe Lego Inc / whoever didn't make the custom parts needed to do 1-1.
Renegade:
Quick guess with no homework - the fact it uses Legos? Legos are square thingies, so maybe Lego Inc / whoever didn't make the custom parts needed to do 1-1.
-TaoPhoenix (December 08, 2012, 03:01 PM)
--- End quote ---
+1
That'd be my guess. They're working with fixed, stock parts, so...
Mark0:
Nice!
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