Reinvent the Wheel? Maybe We Did.
The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient geared device (with more than 30 geared wheels) found in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece about a hundred years ago. It may be a much more intricate computer-like instrument than previously thought. In fact some call it the “first computer”.
According to an article in the NYT the researchers said, “their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions, and the gears were a representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.”
The technology was somehow lost, and it was not for another thousand years that an instrument matching that level of sophistication was “invented” again in Baghdad.
Here is the article in Nature.