If you refer to the Antykthera as a "clockwork computer", some people will think you are saying the ancient Greeks (not Romans btw) had something like what we think of as a computer. But in this case it was a mechanical device that tracked the movement of the stars. It was an achievement (in the fields of precision manufacturing and astronomical observation) but not as remarkable as people make it out to be. They had data on historical positions of the planets, used that to estimate circular orbits for various bodies, and used gears to make everything move together with as much accuracy as their incomplete knowledge of planetary motion allowed. Or at least that's my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong. If someone wants to make it sound even more impressive than it was, like so many Youtube videos, they call it a computer. By similar logic a calendar is also a computer. If you start with a known date and X out a day for every single day that passes, the calendar will always tell you what day it is.
Electroplating was invented in 1805. Not saying that there may not have been a very small group of elites with that technology in the ancient past, just that we don't have any actual evidence of it (that I am aware; again please feel free to supply any evidence to the contrary).
The Antykthera device didn't do any math. You turn a crank and it makes the planets rotate together. You could "observe" the rough positions of the planets, but the device did not actually perform any logic.
They weren't talking about a mill.
If you refer to the Antykthera as a "clockwork computer", some people will think you are saying the ancient Greeks (not Romans btw) had something like what we think of as a computer. But in this case it was a mechanical device that tracked the movement of the stars. It was an achievement (in the fields of precision manufacturing and astronomical observation) but not as remarkable as people make it out to be. They had data on historical positions of the planets, used that to estimate circular orbits for various bodies, and used gears to make everything move together with as much accuracy as their incomplete knowledge of planetary motion allowed. Or at least that's my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong. If someone wants to make it sound even more impressive than it was, like so many Youtube videos, they call it a computer. By similar logic a calendar is also a computer. If you start with a known date and X out a day for every single day that passes, the calendar will always tell you what day it is.
Electroplating was invented in 1805. Not saying that there may not have been a very small group of elites with that technology in the ancient past, just that we don't have any actual evidence of it (that I am aware; again please feel free to supply any evidence to the contrary).
That literally what I mean about the clock work computers, using gears to do math, which is what the Antykthera Mechanism does.
The Antykthera device didn't do any math. You turn a crank and it makes the planets rotate together. You could "observe" the rough positions of the planets, but the device did not actually perform any logic.