“Santorini shapes”
“Meteora- Greece”
Meteora (= “levitating”) is an area in Thessaly (Central Greece) and Kalampaka is the city under
the rock towers of Meteora. The thing that makes Meteora so special is
the monasteries on the top of the rock towers.
The Antikythera Mechanism
Among the treasures of the Greek National Archaeological Museum in Athens
are the remains of the most complex scientific object that has been
preserved from antiquity. Corroded and crumbling from 2,000 years under
the sea, its dials, gear wheels and inscribed plates present the
historian with a tantalizing problem. Because of them we may have to
revise many of our estimates of Greek science. By studying them we may find
vital clues to the true origins of that high scientific technology which
hitherto has seemed peculiar to our modern civilization, setting it apart
from all cultures of the past
The oldest known computer, the Antikythera Mechanism – Athens museum, Greece
Driven by a storm from their usual area of work, a crew of Greek
sponge divers found themselves off the Aegean island of
Antikythera.
There, in 200 feet of water, they discovered the remains of a
shipwreck from classical times. This ship, it was later surmised,
was a Roman galley laden with Greek statues and other treasure:
booty being taken back to the imperial capitol. Among the relics
brought up from this shipwreck and taken to the Greek National
Archeological Museum was a coral encrusted bronze mechanism.
Dated at 80 BC or earlier, it was not clear initially what the
device was, except that it was clearly a sophisticated mechanism.
X-ray analysis was subsequently used to probe the inner structure of
the device, the details of the gears.
Finally in 1974, a full analysis was published by Professor D. De
Solla Price. While some of the original gearing was missing, there
was enough to work out that the device was intended to show the
motion of the Moon, Sun, and most likely the Planets through the
years, when the handle was turned…
(Athens museum)
A full scale (working) reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism