60 Fun Facts About Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism is generally described as the oldest known example of what?

An analogue computer. Its gear trains are more complex than any other device known for at least a thousand years afterwards, yet nobody noticed them until a wheel was spotted in the corroded bronze in 1902.

Why had the divers who found the Antikythera wreck stopped at the island?

Weather. They had put in to wait for it to turn, and a diver who went down off the island came upon the cargo of a ship sunk some 2,000 years earlier, perhaps in a storm of its own.

The divers who found the Antikythera wreck in 1900 came from which Greek island?

Symi. Its divers, who lived by gathering sponges, went on to salvage the wreck themselves in 1900 and 1901, under the supervision of archaeologists sent by the Greek government.

Salvage of the Antikythera wreck stopped in 1901 after what killed one diver and paralysed two?

The bends. The divers were working more than 40 metres down, and after the casualties the wreck was left untouched for half a century.

What did the divers bring up in 1900 as proof that they had found the Antikythera wreck?

A bronze statue's arm. In one telling the first diver surfaced babbling about corpses and horses on the seabed, and his captain, suspecting nitrogen had fuddled him, went down and fetched the arm himself.

Which archaeologist is credited with spotting a gear wheel in a corroded lump from the Antikythera wreck in 1902?

Valerios Stais. The first newspaper reports gave the find to his cousin Spyridon Stais, the former education minister who had arranged the salvage.

Which museum holds all the surviving fragments of the Antikythera mechanism?

National Archaeological Museum, Athens. The sponge divers salvaged the wreck for the Greek government, with navy ships in support, so its statues and the corroded lump all went to the capital.

The Antikythera mechanism's case was about the size of which everyday object?

A shoebox. It apparently left the sea as one corroded lump that soon cracked apart, and cleaning and handling have since left it in 82 fragments.

One turn of the Antikythera mechanism's main wheel stood for what span?

One year. Every other gear train took its motion from this wheel, so one input moved all the pointers on both faces of the device together.

In 1903 a Greek naval officer published the first study of the Antikythera gears, calling the device what kind of instrument?

An astrolabe. Periklis Rediadis argued that the gearwork did the job of the engraved star projection on an ordinary astrolabe, and the label stuck to the device for decades.

Which Yale science historian revived study of the Antikythera mechanism from 1951 and published X-ray findings in 1974?

Derek de Solla Price. A Greek radiographer imaged the lumps for him with gamma rays as well as X-rays, and the wheels hidden inside became the basis of his book Gears from the Greeks.

Astrophysicist Mike Edmunds led the 2005 X-ray study of the Antikythera fragments from which Welsh university?

Cardiff. Edmunds's team had an X-ray machine brought to the fragments, which were too fragile to travel, and the scans let them read text buried inside the lumps.

About how many gear wheels survive in the fragments of the Antikythera mechanism?

30. They lie packed in layers inside the corroded lumps, so they could be counted only once the fragments were X-rayed, and every reconstruction adds a few lost wheels to complete the trains.

Which Greek astronomer's theory of the Moon's uneven speed across the sky is modelled by the Antikythera mechanism?

Hipparchus. He worked out a theory of how the Moon speeds up and slows down, and the device copies that rhythm so closely that some researchers suspect he had a hand in its design.

Jars in the Antikythera ship's cargo point to which island, a hub of Greek astronomy, as the mechanism's possible workshop?

Rhodes. The ship carried Rhodian jars and the island had the leading astronomers of the age, though a calendar on the device's back suggests it was adapted for a buyer elsewhere in Greece.

The month names on the Antikythera mechanism's calendar dial belong to the family used by which Greek city and its colonies?

Corinth. The reading surprised the team in 2008, because the rest of the cargo came from the eastern Aegean, and it turned attention to Corinthian colonies in north-west Greece and Sicily.

The Antikythera wreck's silver coins came from Ephesus and which other city of Asia Minor?

Pergamon. Its silver coins lay with others from Ephesus, and the latest were struck between 76 and 67 BC, which gives the firmest date for the sinking.

The ship carrying the Antikythera mechanism sank around 65 BC, during the lifetime of which Roman?

Julius Caesar. Some researchers suggest the statues and luxuries aboard were loot on their way to Rome for a celebration he staged, though nobody knows who owned the cargo.

Geared machines as intricate as the Antikythera mechanism next appeared in medieval Europe as what?

Astronomical clocks. Nothing as intricate is known for well over a thousand years: bronze was routinely melted down for reuse, so other devices of its kind have probably vanished.

How was the Antikythera mechanism driven?

By turning a small hand crank. The crank is lost, but the little crown wheel it turned survives, and winding it forward or backward ran the heavens to any date the user chose.

The movable outer ring on the Antikythera mechanism's front dial carries the month names of which calendar?

Egyptian. That calendar was standard among Greek astronomers but had no leap days, and the usual reading is that the ring was made movable so it could be shifted a day every four years.

The fixed inner ring on the Antikythera mechanism's front dial has twelve equal 30-degree sectors standing for what?

The signs of the zodiac. Each sign got an equal twelfth of the Sun's yearly path, whatever the size of its constellation, so the Sun pointer crossed one of them in about a month.

The Antikythera mechanism made its Moon pointer speed up and slow down by means of what?

Epicyclic gearing. Two wheels riding on a third, linked by an off-centre pin and slot, copy the Moon's changing speed, though the Greeks had no idea that its orbit is an ellipse.

How did the Antikythera mechanism show the Moon's phase?

A small rotating half-black, half-white ball. Michael Wright showed that it sat in the Moon pointer and was turned by the difference between the Sun's motion and the Moon's, so it ran through the phases once a month.

The two main dials on the Antikythera mechanism's back have what shape?

Spirals. A pin on each pointer rode in the spiral groove through several turns, and when it reached the end the user had to move it back to the start by hand.

The Antikythera mechanism's 19-year Metonic cycle brings the seasons back into step with what?

Lunar months. Nineteen years come to almost exactly 235 of them, so cities whose months followed the Moon could use the cycle to tell when a year needed a thirteenth month.

The Antikythera mechanism's Saros dial followed a cycle of 223 months, a little over 18 years, to predict what?

Eclipses. Glyphs marked the months to watch and whether the Sun or the Moon would darken, though a predicted solar eclipse might not be visible from where the user stood.

The Antikythera mechanism's Exeligmos dial told users to add eight or sixteen of what to a forecast?

Hours. The Saros cycle runs a third of a day over a whole number of days, so each repeat falls eight hours later, and after three cycles the count comes back to whole days.

The small four-year dial on the back of the Antikythera mechanism showed the timing of what?

Panhellenic athletic games. Researchers had taken the little dial for a 76-year calendar cycle until scans read in 2008 showed the names Olympia, Nemea, Isthmia and Pythia in its four sectors.

What is unusual about the pointer on the Antikythera mechanism's small four-year dial?

It moves anticlockwise. The four year-sectors are engraved in anticlockwise order, so one extra wheel, driven off the shaft of the calendar dial around it, gave the hand the matching turn.

Month names on the Antikythera mechanism's calendar dial match those of Epirus and which Ionian island?

Corfu. Known then as Corcyra, it shared a calendar with its mainland neighbours, and the match has led scholars to argue the device was made for a buyer in north-west Greece.

The Antikythera mechanism's Sun and Moon cycles came to the Greeks from which people?

Babylonians. Their astronomers kept dated records of the sky for centuries, long enough to spot the repeating cycles that Greek astronomers took over and the device turns into dials.

The text engraved on the Antikythera mechanism's back door is thought to have served as what?

An instruction manual. The text mixes technical words for the device's parts, such as trunnions and perforations, with the lengths of its cycles, as if telling an owner how to read the dials.

Michael Wright, who built a working model of the Antikythera mechanism complete with planets, was a curator at which London museum?

The Science Museum. Wright X-rayed the fragments himself and built his model in his own workshop, and the 2005 scanning team went on to confirm many of his ideas.

What shape are the gear teeth of the Antikythera mechanism?

Equilateral triangles. The teeth are not all even, which suggests each wheel was cut by hand from sheet bronze.

According to Cicero, which Roman general carried Archimedes' celestial globes home after taking Syracuse?

Marcus Claudius Marcellus. In Cicero's telling he kept just one globe for himself out of all the city's booty, and it was still being shown to visitors at his grandson's house.

Which lost work by Archimedes, mentioned by Pappus, is thought to have dealt with his planetarium?

On Sphere-Making. Plutarch says Archimedes thought his practical inventions unworthy of a book, and every work of his that survives is theory, so this lost title would be the one exception.

Which undersea explorer relocated the Antikythera wreck in 1953 and returned with a full team in the 1970s?

Jacques Cousteau. Working from the Calypso, his divers raised nearly 300 objects on that second visit, among them the silver coins that fixed the date of the sinking.

A skeleton found at the Antikythera wreck in 2016 raised hopes of which feat on someone 2,000 years under the sea?

DNA analysis. The skull still had the dense bones behind the ear, where DNA survives better than anywhere else in a skeleton, though the Greek authorities first had to approve any test.

A lead weight from the Antikythera wreck may be a weapon, dropped from a yardarm onto enemy decks, named after which animal?

A dolphin. Thucydides writes of big ships carrying such weights to hole a vessel that came alongside, and the excavators say theirs would be the only one known, if that is what it is.

Which Trojan prince may the bronze Antikythera Youth, who once held a round object in his right hand, represent?

Paris. On that reading the lost object was the apple he awarded to Aphrodite, but he is usually shown cloaked and capped, so others see a young Heracles, or Perseus holding up Medusa's head.

The island of Antikythera lies between the Peloponnese and which large island?

Crete. The islet sits on what was a busy shipping route between the eastern and western Mediterranean, so the freighter was probably heading west for Italy when it went down.

Which film franchise turned the Antikythera mechanism into a device for finding rifts in time?

Indiana Jones. In Dial of Destiny the villain means to fly back to 1939, but the dial delivers everyone to the siege of Syracuse in Archimedes' own lifetime instead.

After the 2014 dives, archaeologist Brendan Foley called the Antikythera ship, with its luxury cargo, the ancient world's what?

Titanic. The immense size of its anchors and hull planks pointed to a huge ship for its time, and Foley's team thinks much of the cargo still lies buried under the sand.

Which YouTube channel documents a machinist rebuilding the Antikythera mechanism with tools of its own age?

Clickspring. While measuring the calendar ring for his build, its maker Chris Budiselic found it probably had 354 holes, not 365, a result published in 2020 and later backed by Glasgow physicists.

Which Finnish band released a song called 'The Antikythera Mechanism' on a 2024 album?

Nightwish. The song is on Yesterwynde, and songwriter Tuomas Holopainen liked the device enough to propose a mechanical watch modelled on it, sold as a limited edition with a Finnish watchmaker.

In 2024 Glasgow physicists recounted the holes under the Antikythera mechanism's calendar ring using statistics built for detecting what?

Gravitational waves. Graham Woan took up the puzzle after a colleague showed him a YouTuber's measurements of the ring, and his analysis put the count at 354 or 355, not the 365 long assumed.

Plates on the front of the Antikythera mechanism listed the dates when certain stars rose and set, an early form of what?

An almanac. Entries such as the dawn rising of the Pleiades were keyed by letters to points on the dial, so the pointer showed when each sighting was due and the season could be read off.

Even with perfect gearing, the Antikythera mechanism's reconstructed Mars pointer could be nearly 38 degrees out because of what?

Greek planetary theory. Circles carried on circles copy a planet's backward loops only roughly, and Mars strays most; nothing better was possible until Ptolemy, in the second century AD.

Which documentary film-maker turned researcher was lead author of the 2006 and 2008 Nature papers on the Antikythera mechanism?

Tony Freeth. An astronomer friend suggested the device as the subject for a film, but Freeth, a mathematician by training, was soon working out its gearing instead.

The Antikythera mechanism featured in a 1980 television series on unexplained mysteries fronted by which science-fiction author?

Arthur C. Clarke. The episode set the genuine Greek gearwork beside crystal skulls and other supposed ancient wonders, and interviewed the historian who had X-rayed it.

In Cicero's De re publica, which early Greek thinker is credited with making the first solid celestial globe?

Thales of Miletus. In the dialogue his plain globe is only the start: Eudoxus later marked it with the constellations, and Archimedes' leap was a second kind that showed Sun, Moon and planets in motion.

Divers returning to the Antikythera wreck in 2014 tested the Exosuit, a hard diving suit likened to which superhero's armour?

Iron Man. The suit lets a diver stay at depth far longer than those breathing gas can, and come back up with no decompression stops.

The lighting-dome photography that revealed worn lettering on the Antikythera fragments in 2005 had already been used to read what?

Cuneiform clay tablets. Hewlett-Packard built the method to make computer graphics look real and found that it brought out worn writing: a surface is photographed lit from many angles, then relit at will on screen.

Cicero wrote that which friend of his had recently built a globe showing the planets' motions?

Posidonius. In Cicero's dialogue the globe is an argument for design in nature: carry it to Scythia or Britain, the speaker says, and no one there would doubt it was the work of a reasoning mind.

Gearwork like the Antikythera mechanism's turns up again centuries later in an early Byzantine calendar that was built into what?

A sundial. Its surviving gears tracked the positions of the Sun and the Moon, which suggests the know-how was handed down in the eastern Mediterranean rather than lost.

The ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices, credited to three brothers who drew on Greek mechanical texts, came from which city?

Baghdad. The Banu Musa brothers were educated under the care of the caliph al-Ma'mun, whose House of Wisdom there was translating Greek science, and later paid for manuscripts to be brought from Byzantium.

Which 11th-century Chinese polymath built a clock tower with a mechanically rotated armillary sphere?

Su Song. He added a chain drive to a water-powered clock, so that a single waterwheel turned the sphere on the roof and the figures below that announced the time.

Which Swiss watchmaker shrank the Antikythera mechanism's gearing into a working wristwatch-sized tribute?

Hublot. Its engineers fitted the ancient gear trains and a modern timekeeping movement into one watch case, and in 2012 the piece went on show beside the original fragments.

A fully working replica of the Antikythera mechanism, filmed for Nature in 2010, was built from which toy?

Lego. Hobbyist Andy Carol built it, with plastic gear trains standing in for the hand-cut bronze wheels, and a short film showed the toy version working through the same cycles of Sun and Moon.