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!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk

Video from 2010, but I'm betting few people have heard of this, and would really like the LEGO angle there.

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.

[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.

+1

That'd be my guess. They're working with fixed, stock parts, so...

[Mark0]

Nice!

[Edvard]

Why didn't they just make an exact duplicate?
...
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.

I very much agree, but let's be fair; they don't have all the parts, and there's still some debate as to what it's exact function was.  Obviously, it was some sort of heavenly-body-tracking thingummy, but exactly which, what, and why is still up for discussion without a complete device (well, the why can be put down to simple scientific endeavor, but still...).  All the replicas made so far, therefore, cannot be exact replicas, and never can be unless we find an identical device that is complete or the original blueprints.

I concur with thinking it's amazing enough these folks were able to replicate what is known about it's function with just off-the-shelf lego technic parts.  Nice find, Ren!

[Renegade]

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.

I very much agree, but let's be fair; they don't have all the parts, and there's still some debate as to what it's exact function was.  Obviously, it was some sort of heavenly-body-tracking thingummy, but exactly which, what, and why is still up for discussion without a complete device (well, the why can be put down to simple scientific endeavor, but still...).  All the replicas made so far, therefore, cannot be exact replicas, and never can be unless we find an identical device that is complete or the original blueprints.

Awwww... C'mon guys...

We all KNOW that evolution and knowledge and society and civilisation and technology and peace and love and grooviness ALWAYS go forward and never backwards, we MUST be the pinnacle of all that ever has been or ever was birthed on Earth!

So... Obviously this device PROVES that mankind has received assistance from aliens in the past~!

Grays? Reptilians? Daleks? From the Pleiades? Sirius? Seriously?


But seriously... They have done 3D x-rays on the device to reconstruct models of it. So, there's a pretty solid basis there for extrapolating what it does/did. Maybe replicas aren't exact, but, they're probably "good enough" to get a pretty good ballpark idea about the device at a very minimum.

If you want to run a software demo, there's one here:

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/AntikytheraMechanism/

I've not tried it though.