The World’s Oldest Computer Mapped the Heavens

We’ve been flamed in the past for blogging about old news, so we’ll go out on a limb and blog about something even older. Since none of us here at QJ has written an article on it, here’s an article about the Antikythera analog computer.

This is really old news. Over 2000 years old.

The primitive device was built around 80-something BC and was discovered off the island of Antikythera in 1901. It’s been hyped as the “world’s oldest computer.” What does it do? Some believed it to be some kind of astronomical showpiece, but it’s more than that. It calculates the motions of the sun, moon, and planets.

But is it correct to keep call it a computer? Or is this just a plot by ancient history teachers to make their subject seem more interesting? Let’s see what you gadget-minded readers think:

• A computer is a device that inputs, processes, and outputs data.
• With the Antikythera mechanism, you input the date (past or future) using a crank, and the machine shows the positions of the sun, moon, and planets.

For the geeks:

• One kind of analog computer is a device that represents numerical quantities by physical qualities.
• Yup. That’s exactly what the Antikythera machine does.

So it’s a computer. Hmmm. In that case, maybe next week we’ll write about the robots of ancient Rhodes.

We’ve been flamed in the past for blogging about old news, so we’ll go out on a limb and blog about something even older. Since none of us here at QJ has written an article on it, here’s an article about the Antikythera analog computer.

This is really old news. Over 2000 years old.

The primitive device was built around 80-something BC and was discovered off the island of Antikythera in 1901. It’s been hyped as the “world’s oldest computer.” What does it do? Some believed it to be some kind of astronomical showpiece, but it’s more than that. It calculates the motions of the sun, moon, and planets.

But is it correct to keep call it a computer? Or is this just a plot by ancient history teachers to make their subject seem more interesting? Let’s see what you gadget-minded readers think:

• A computer is a device that inputs, processes, and outputs data.
• With the Antikythera mechanism, you input the date (past or future) using a crank, and the machine shows the positions of the sun, moon, and planets.

For the geeks:

• One kind of analog computer is a device that represents numerical quantities by physical qualities.
• Yup. That’s exactly what the Antikythera machine does.

So it’s a computer. Hmmm. In that case, maybe next week we’ll write about the robots of ancient Rhodes.