Did you know that the oldest computer know to man is over 2,000 years old? Well it is not what we would normally call a computer by todays standards. There’s no screen or keyboard and mouse, but it can predict the future,”Kinda”.
The Antikythera mechanism was made by the ancient Greeks over 2,000 years ago. With the use of a complex system of gears, they were able to predict the position of the planets, and major Steller events at any point in the future.
I mentioned that it is not what we would normally call a computer, as the vast majority of computers in our day-to-day lives are digital, where this computer in old school analog.
While the Antikythera mechanism is a marvel for its time, you would find it to rather inaccurate for predictions far into the future. This is not because its wrong or bad at doing its job, but rather a critical flaw in how analog computers function.
Todays computers run calculations digitally, or using series of ones and zeros called binary. In binary there are only ones and zeros, this allows for precise calculations. Where an analog computer might accomplish these same calculations, the nature of how these are caried out allows for some “error” as gears have travel time, parts wear down, and many other factors that can cause analog computers to produce inaccurate results.
Regardless of the potential inaccuracies that the Antikythera mechanism may have had when it was built, it still is extremely impressive considering it was built in the times of classical Greece.
