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The ancient computer that simply shouldn't exist
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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Very cool feat of technology and engineering for the time period. Though, can it really be classified as a computer? It's more like a "calculator" but doesn't in principle do anything more than a lookup table can do. The lookup table is basically encoded in the gear ratios. Maybe I'm being too uncharitable. But this is like calling a watch a computer that calculates seconds since midnight.
It's definitely not a general purpose computer but it is a computer and does a lot more than a watch. You could input a date and it would calculate the phase of the moon, positions of all the planets then known about, whether there was an eclipse, and which of the panhellenic games it would be time for.
Also, the error this video mentions is very likely a fault of the early 2000s reconstruction making a bad assumption and using a solar calendar rather than the lunar calendar the original probably used, according to new research by Clickspring et al