A Romanian gentleman, a retired Super, approached me as he has several times in the past about interesting phenomena, and suggested I google "The oldest computer in the World." Here's where it led: The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient Greek analog computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes. It was discovered in 1902 among a ship's wreckage retrieved off the coast of the island that bears the item's name. It is believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientists, and has been dated within 205-87 BC. The knowledge of this technology was lost at some point in antiquity, and works of its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the development of mechanical astronomical clocks in Europe in the 14th century. The original apparently came out of the Mediterranean as a single encrusted piece. Soon afterward it fractured into three parts. Other small pieces have broken off from cleaning and handling, and still others were found on the sea floor by a Jacques Cousteau expedition. Other fragments may be in storage somewhere, undiscovered since the initial recovery. The article at Wikipedia makes this conclusion: "the Antikythera Mechanism was a machine designed to predict celestial phenomena according to the sophisticated astronomical theories current in its day, the sole witness to a lost history of brilliant engineering, a conception of pure genius, one of the great wonders of the ancient world—but it didn’t really work very well." There's a lot more info on the page, too detailed and complex for me. The Romanian gentleman believes its origin is alien, as he does about the pyramids. Fox Muldaur has yet to weigh in on this. Here are two pics, the first of the actual device, the second a computer generated one of what the front may have looked like:
From the
Weird But True column in today's
NY Post, in my own words: This sounds like a step too far in tech innovation. The inventor of a sex robot claims guys will soon be able to have babies with their bots. The plan is to deliver via a 3-D printer. Man, that's creepy - and great fodder for sci-fi writers. Maybe the 2018 episodes of
The X-Files will touch on it.
My thanks to the gentleman who purchased
The Complete Works of O'Henry, and to the woman who bought three thrillers in Russian.
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