Lego Antikythera Mechanism
The Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known scientific computer, built in Greece at around 100 BCE. Lost for 2000 years, it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901. But not until a century later was its purpose understood: an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision. In 2010, a fully-functional replica was built out of Lego. (See YouTube video here). However, as I pointed out in Rapture For The Geeks, the abacus is the oldest “computer,” as far as we know. 500 B.C. – the Abacus Technology and math have had a symbiotic relationship ever since Early Man’s first wife ran out of fingers and toes while counting her husband’s shortcomings and character defects. With twenty or more reasons she’d be better off with some other mug, Early Man’s wife used pebbles, stones, sticks, or other handy objects arranged in columns along lines drawn in the sand. The word “calculus” is Latin for pebble, and these arrangements of pebbles and other objects were the first free-form abaci (the plural of abacus and an important word in early Babylonian Scrabble games). Using abaci, our female ancestors suddenly became proficient at tracking dozens of compound male personality […]
