Arthur Clarke wrote in 1977 of the Antikythera Mechanism: Looking at this extraordinary relic is a most disturbing experience. Few activities are more futile than the What if... type of speculation, yet the Antikythera mechanism positively compels such thinking. Though it is over two thousand years old, it represents a level which our technology did not reach until the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, this complex device described merely the planets apparent movements; it did not help to *explain* them. With the far simpler tools of inclined planes, swinging pendulums, and falling weights, Galileo pointed the way to that understanding, and to the modern world. If the insight of the Greeks had matched their ingenuity, the industrial revolution might have begun a thousand years before Columbus. By this time we would not merely be pottering around on the moon; we would have reached the nearer stars.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 07:42:20 +0000
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