Ancient Greeks Used Computer To Set Date For Olympics
August 1st, 2008 | by admin |
According to researchers an old mechanical brass calculator which was used by the ancient Greeks to predict solar and lunar eclipses may also have been used to set the dates for the Olympics.
According to the researchers, whose findings appear in the journal Nature, this computer was quite unique and complex for the times, and relied on an intricate set of bronze gearwheels, dials and inscriptions to formulate Olympic games dates.
There was some sort of human intervention involved of course, as the games were always set to begin on the full moon cloesest to the summer solstice.
Historians “had until now doubted that this scheme had actually been used in civil life, but the evidence from the Antikythera mechanism now proves them
wrong,” said science historian Francois Charette of Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, who was not involved in the research.
By analyzing the 2,100-year-old calculator, researchers noted numbers and symbols etched into the device that proves their theory that the Greeks relied on the Antikythera mechanism, to schedule the Olympics and other games leading up to them.
