. Argued to be the world's oldest known computer, this ancient Greek invention was used some time circa 100BC to calculate and "predict celestial events and eclipses with unprecedented accuracy." Skipping past the two millennia in which it lay lost on a sea floor somewhere, the Mechanism has now been recreated by an Apple software engineer by the name of Andrew Carol, who has lovingly pieced 1,500 Lego Technic blocks together, creating 110 gears and four gearboxes in total. Each box is responsible for performing one piece of arithmetic, and when the resulting machine is fed with appropriate calendar data, it spits out a (hopefully accurate) prediction for the next time a solar eclipse should occur.
Apple engineer uses Lego to rebuild Antikythera mechanism
Posted on Friday, December 10 2010 @ 21:39 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Engadget reports an Apple engineer used Lego to rebuild the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism. Pretty amazing stuff!