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Die Entschlüsselung Des Himmels. Der Erste Computer, Ein 2000 Jahre Altes Rätsel Wird Gelöst (2009)

by Jo Marchant(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

3498045172 (ISBN13: 9783498045173)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Rowohlt

review 1: The Antikythera mechanism was retrieved from an ancient Greek trading vessel off the tiny Greek island of Antikhera (hence the name, obviously). Centuries ahead of its time, the mechanism was in fragments by the time it was salvaged in 1901. The book charts its collection, restoration, and how it has survived since the. Most importantly, it explains the various theories which archaeologists, historians and scientists have propounded about what the mechanism was for, and how it worked. At first it appeared to be a clockwork "calendar computer" that "calculated the movements of the Sun and Moon as seen from Earth" and allowed the "prediction of the corresponding position of the stars". Further research revealed it to be a planetarium although, with advances in X-ray tomograp... morehy and more pieces found, analysis in the 2000s suggested it was an eclipse predictor. Some pure speculations are that it was created or designed by Hipparchus, the foremost astronomer of his age, by the politician and philosopher Posidonius, that it was used for casting horoscopes, or that it was the ultimate gadget for a rich Roman. Or even that it was a miniaturised descendent of a device that Archimedes mig have made. But by far the most likely origin, based on the names and sequence of months on one of the dials, is that it was made for the town of Tauromenion in Sicily, and that it was being moved to a new home (possibly Rome) when the ship carrying it went down.For an overview (and 8pictures), check Wikipedia, but if you are more deeply interested, then read this book. 8/10 (May 2013)
review 2: Excellent story-telling about a one-of-a-kind astronomical "computer" from ancient Greece; and the obsessed scholars who spent years trying to decipher how it was built and how it worked.The author points out the sketchy nature of archaeological remains, especially ones made of metal (which would have been recycled numerous times), to show that devices like this may have been "common" but didn't survive to our own time.Besides the amazing technical achievement of the device's construction in 1st cent. B.C., "it became a key piece of evidence in the history of astronomy, encoding the very latest in astronomical knowledge" (p.254). One of the first to attempt to decipher the device was science historian, Derek De Solla Price, who said: "Knowledge works rather like a large jigsaw puzzle. You wait until somebody puts down a piece and try to find a piece of your own to place on that living edge." less

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