World’s first computer may have also told fortunes
ATHENS: A 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator used by ancient Greeks to chart the movement of the sun, moon and planets may also have had another purpose, fortune telling, say researchers. Heralded as the world’s first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism is a system of intricate bronze gears dating to around 60 BC, used by ancient Greeks to track solar and lunar eclipses. It was retrieved from a ship- wreck discovered off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901. While researchers had previously focused on its internal mechanisms, a decades-long study is now attempting to decode minute inscriptions on the remaining fragments of its outer surfaces. “It confirms that the mechanism displayed planets as well as showing the position of the sun and the moon in the sky,” said Mike Edmunds, an astrophysics professor from the University of Cardiff in Wales who is part of the research project team. But in creating heaven’s mirror, its ancient engineers may have also given in to a less scientific urge—man’s perpetual curiosity about what the future holds. Edmunds, who has worked on the project for about 12 years, said decoding of the inscriptions also threw up an interesting nugget—the colour of a forthcoming eclipse. “We are not quite sure how to interpret this, to be fair, but it could hark back to suggestions that the colour of an eclipse was some sort of omen or signal. Certain colours might be better for what’s coming than other colours,” he told a presentation in Athens. “If that is so, and we are interpreting that correctly, this is the first instance we have in the mechanism of any real mention of astrology rather than astronomy,” he said. Nonetheless, the overriding objective of the mechanism was astronomical and not astrological, he said.