Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer

"Although on the surface this book has nothing directly to do with Ireland, I came across the story while researching ancient methods of timekeeping and star-gazing for a book on Irish round towers. The book is about several weird unattractive corroded lumps of metal that was hauled out of the sea in 1901 off the coast of a small Greek island, and which have been puzzling archaeologists, physicists, engineers and astronomers ever since. These fragments turn out to have been parts of an extraordinarily complex and ingenious mechanical computer of about 300 BC which could calculate the positions of the planets, the sun and the moon at any moment in the past, present or future, as well as all eclipses, both solar and lunar, and relate them to one of the Greek calendars that was in use at the time. It was worked by an elaborately arranged series of cogged wheels which moved dials and pointers on the back and front faces of the mechanism. Nothing of this degree of mechanical sophistication was known to exist before the development of clockwork in the Middle Ages. I have been fascinated by this since I first heard about it: Marchant’s book demonstrates how slight is our understanding of the knowledge and the science that existed in the Greek world , before the Romans smashed it up, and is by extrapolation a useful reminder for anyone interested in early history of how little we really know about the knowledge of the ancients. Precisely. The 6th and 7th century monks who built the round towers in Ireland were incredibly sophisticated in their understanding of the movements of the heavens, and yet we have almost no definite information on the purpose behind the towers’ design. Theories run the gamut: refuges, memorials, bell towers, even, hilariously, early medieval radio antennae. But it is the lack of a simple answer that in itself gives us some inkling: they were built following a complex theory, and it is one into which, for all our supposed sophistication, we lack any insight."