Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for August 09, 2020

Well, those funny cat videos weren’t going to watch themselves, you know!

Either that or to post unfounded nonsense.

How did they spell “meow” in ancient Greek?

That’s why computers were invented!

Wikipedia: The knowledge of [the Antikythera] was lost at some point in antiquity. Similar technological works later appeared in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic worlds, but works with similar complexity did not appear again until the development of mechanical astronomical clocks in Europe in the fourteenth century.

Always go for the most money-making uses first…

There is another use?

The Antikythera mechanism gives the lie to the notion Ancient Greek scientific thought was mostly theoretical. It make you wonder what else we have lost over time.

Imagine sitting there and filing out gears one at time. I can’t believe it is a one off. Making a gear would be a special skill, not just some hobby.

30 years and still going strong — I’ve never watched an internet cat video!

It was used to play Solitare.

Still works perfectly, but you can no longer get software updates or an internet browser that works with it.

Probably used Vista, too.

And porn.

One of the lovely ironies of life, the more sophisticated computers have become, the more trivial tasks we’ve assigned to them. In the days when computers were massive but not particularly powerful, they were used for scientific inquiry. They solved complex problems and helped us travel to the moon. As they grew more affordable, they were purchased for private companies to do massive tasks like automating payroll or analyzing structures. I’m now reading this comic on a laptop that has more power than the supercomputers of the ‘60s and ’70s. Don’t you just love technology?

And post hateful and snarky comment about the emperor.

Or nude pictures of the Oracle at Delphi.

Here, “computer” is used broadly: A person or machine that does calculations.

The “programming” of Antikythera Mechanism couldn’t be changed except by altering its hardware, so it doesn’t qualify as a computer in the modern use of the word. By that standard, ENIAC also fails to qualify as a computer.

The toughest problem for sailors has long been knowing their longitude. Latitude was easy; but because the earth spins, longitude “changes” with time, so very good clocks were needed. The book “Longitude” by Sobel and Andrews is a fascinating history of the development of clocks for ships in the 17th-18th centuries. Clocks got exposed to weather and temperature fluctuations and battered around in storms, but had to “take a lickin’ and keep on tickin.” A competition ensued, the best designed clocks would be sold to the British navy, and so it’s a great story.

Way ahead of their time….meow

I think we all have this idea that people were less sophisticated hundreds or thousands of years ago. Finds like this (and surviving artwork etc) turn that on its head. Like this one – thanks to TK!