Ancient technology, a 2000 year old computer

posted by John Lampard on Monday, 11 January, 2010 at 9:04 am

Amazing, a mechanism over two thousand years old, that could predict eclipses and Moon phases.

Using nothing but an ingenious system of gears, the mechanism could be used to predict the month, day and hour of an eclipse, and even accounted for leap years. It could also predict the positions of the sun and moon against the zodiac, and has a gear train that turns a black and white stone to show the moon’s phase on a given date. It is possible that it could also show the astronomical positions of the planets known to the ancients: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

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