In 1901, a 2,000 year old shipwreck was found with a device that should not have existed

Around 2 millennia ago a ship was sailing on the Mediterranean sea when it unexpectedly sank along with all the contents on board. For thousands of years the shipwreck lay undiscovered until divers in 1901 would venture down to the sea floor and stumble upon it. What they found amongst the remains was a strange device which would come to be known as the Antikythera Mechanism. 

There was just one problem with this perplexing device. It contained a number of gear wheels, the kind that wouldn’t be found in devices until roughly a thousand years later. It was thought to be some sort of “computer,” of course, it may not be what we consider a computer today, but rather it fits the more archaic definition which is a machine that is used to calculate something.

By all rights such a complex object should not have existed back then. The Antikythera Mechanism had the potential to change everything historians believed to be true about life during the Roman era, if they could just figure out what the device was actually used for.

What did the Antikythera Mechanism calculate?

The discovery of the so-called “computer” left experts with a peculiar mystery to solve. The thing most wanted to know above all else was what purpose the device served, what did it calculate? Historians spent years trying to work it out but it was difficult as the mechanism had been corroded by all those years spent at the bottom of the sea. On top of that, only a third of the device was recovered. Subsequent dives to the site of the shipwreck proved to be fruitless.

It was thought that this strange computer was used to measure the solar system in some way such as predicting eclipses. However progress stalled and time went by. Two world wars ended up drawing attention away from the Antikythera Mechanism until many years later. 

In 2021, scientists from the University College London (UCL) used 3D computer modelling to recreate the device as per the BBC. After more than 100 years, the purpose of the device finally became clear, the whole device wood fit in a wooden container about the size of a shoebox and the internal gears would be turned with a handle to predict astronomical positions years in advance. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, but it was still very impressive given the time period.

According to Britannica.com, the Antikythera Mechanism is thought to be “the only known physical survivor of a long tradition of mechanical astronomical displays.” Although the existence of such devices was referenced in Greco-Roman literature so we can assume this wasn’t the only one of it’s type.