The World's First Analog Computer
Discovered in a Roman shipwreck in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism is a complex Greek bronze device dating back to the second century BCE. Containing dozens of intricate gears, it was used to track astronomical positions and eclipses with astonishing mathematical accuracy, centuries ahead of its time.
The Sponge Divers' Unlikely Find
In the spring of 1900, a crew of Greek sponge divers sheltering from a storm anchored near the small Mediterranean island of Antikythera, situated between Crete and the Peloponnese. Diving off the rocky shoreline, they stumbled upon the remains of an ancient shipwreck lying roughly 45 meters beneath the surface. Over the following months, salvage operations conducted with the support of the Greek government hauled up an extraordinary cache of Hellenistic and Roman artifacts, including life-sized bronze and marble statues, fine glassware, pottery, and silver coins dating to the first century BCE.
Among the treasures brought ashore in 1901 was an unpromising, heavily corroded lump of bronze and mineralized wood that initially escaped close scrutiny. It was only in May 1902, when Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais examined the disintegrating fragment at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, that anyone noticed a precision gear wheel embedded inside the rock-like encrustation. At the time, historians believed that complex geared machinery was an invention of the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance, making the existence of a miniature geared device from classical antiquity deeply contentious and baffling to the academic community.
Deconstructing the Bronze Fragments
Over the decades, the fragile artifact fractured into 82 distinct fragments, the largest of which are designated by letters from A to G, alongside dozens of smaller scraps. Because the bronze was brittle, oxidized, and encased in marine sediment, early researchers could only study visible exterior surfaces. In the 1950s and 1970s, British physicist and science historian Derek J. de Solla Price began using gamma-ray and X-ray radiography to peer inside the solid chunks, revealing that the device contained a dense, interconnected network of triangular-toothed bronze gears preserved within a wooden frame.