For those of us interested in the history of computing....
An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD<
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/john_noble_wilford/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published: November 29, 2006
The New York Times
...a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials
were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians
of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and
illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and
planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world's first computer, has
now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and
three-dimensional X-ray tomography.
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/science/30computecnd.html?hp&ex=1164862800&en=d7d28d698786f28d&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
(If anyone subscribes to NATURE, I would appreciate the complete
letter/article.)
-- tj
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.us
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
-- Buckminster Fuller
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