Podcasting FTLR

When Alex and Eli call, I can’t help but answer.

Alex Tweeted a recent NYT article about the Antikythera Device, asking if anyone would be interested in making a guest podcast about it.

Heck yes, I would be!

I’m a big fan of Eli Hunt’s podcast series and I’m love a challenge…and an antique mechanical analog computer struck me as pretty challenging. But after a bit (okay, a lot) of reading and research, I thought I’d be able to form an interesting narrative of its history, discovery and purpose – as well as its connection to our agonothetai.

Give it a listen here. How did I do?

Alex did a nice writeup to let people know about it, including some of my supplemental links and Eli’s comments.

I’ve included the full text of the podcast under the cut, should you be interested in reading it.

In the year 1900, a team of sponge divers paused on the island of Antikythera to wait out a storm. Deciding to search for sponges off the island’s coastline, a diver named Elias Stadiatos slipped into the ocean and began to explore. Little did he know that he was about to unlock the path to an ancient secret that could forever change our understanding of the history of science and technology.

Imagine Mr. Stadiatos, for a moment. Wrapped in a canvas suit, drifting deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the ocean, the only audible sound his own breathing inside the copper diving helmet and the gentle whoosh of the compressed air supply. He sees dim figures on the sea bed nearby, and moves toward them. But suddenly, the abstract shapes take form, and a heap of rotting corpses and horses become visible through the haze.

Of course, this turned out to be, not horses and bodies, but the wreck of an ancient Roman merchant vessel containing many bronze figures and marble statues. Exploration and recovery continued on the site, bringing up many artifacts. But it was not until May of 1902 that the most extraordinary discovery was made.

The remains of the Greek corbita which had given the sponge diver so much fright were to yield one of the most important – and mysterious – technological artifacts of all time.

I’m Laura Hall, and this is the story of the Antikythera (anti kith err uh) mechanism.

Originally discovered in a calcified lump of corroded bronze recovered from the shipwreck site, the Antikythera Mechanism dates to around 150 to 100 BC, and is about the size of a wall clock. The device contains 82 fragments, including bronze gear wheels, dials and puzzling inscriptions.

It is the few surviving gear wheels of the mechanism are what make this discovery so remarkable. Researchers in the late 50s determined that the device was designed to display the date, positions of the Sun and Moon, the phase of the moon, a 19-year calendar, and to predict eclipses.

Derek J. de Solla Price wrote, in the June 1959 issue of Scientific American:

“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.
. . .
Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known . . . On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist. “

In an article published in on July 30th, 2008 in the journal Nature, scientists reported that recent study of the device revealed more than just a way to calculate complex cycles of mathematical astronomy.

“The mechanism is full of surprises,” said Prof Alexander Jones of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University. “And the latest revelations for the first time establish its cultural origin.”

It was known that the device bore inscriptions, though they were hidden beneath corrosion and surface accretions. But using a method known as microfocus X-ray computed tomography, which produces cross section images, researchers were able to read the month names on a 19-year calendar inscribed on the back of its device.

These names match calendars from Corinthian colonies in northwestern Greece, which originated from Babylonians from at least the early fifth century BC.

Yet even more intriguing were the details of another dial on the back of the device – a piece which follows the four-year cycles of the Olympiad and the associated Panhellenic Games.

“The ancient Greeks could easily work out when to stage the Olympic Games without the Antikythera Mechanism – they simply happened every four years as they do now,” said mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, in Cardiff, Wales.

“So, it was a surprise to find this very simple dial represented on this highly sophisticated mechanism. The inclusion of the Olympiad Dial says more about the central cultural importance of the Games than about their advanced technology.”

In 500 BC, the worlds ended, and the oracles and scientists watched with their omphaloi. After the ban of the Labyrinth sport in 480 BC, the agonothetai were forced to work in secret to preserve the great tradition. Though we can only speculate, it is easy to assume that the scientists and the oracles would have collaborated to ensure the preservation of this essential knowledge.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a device of previously unthinkable complexity. Its most precious secret was inscribed in letters marked in letters only 1.7 millimeters tall. Could this apparatus from nearly five hundred years later, have been adapted by these great game-keepers to continue their careful monitoring of the alignment of parallel worlds?

The Mechanism, the only remaining one of its kind, lay undisturbed on the bottom of the ocean for nearly 2,000 years. Nearly one hundred years since its initial discovery, we are only beginning to fully understand its purpose. But as the Agonothetai had been lost in our world, and are beginning to rise again and flourish, so too is our understanding of the deep significance of the Olympic games, and the vital importance of the lost sport.