Imagine a mechanical device 2000 years old that is more technologically advanced than many swiss watches. Sounds like something out of the Fifth Element doesn’t it? A british science team using high tech imaging techniques has determined that a heavily corroded device discovered in 1902 in the wreck of a ship dated between 100-150 BC is not sci-fi but reality. Called The Antikythera Mechanism, the bronze device originally contained 72 hand cut bronze gears and was used for celestial navigation. It apparently used extremely sophisticated engineering design to model anomalies in the moon’s eliptical orbit, making it more sophitistocated technically than anything produced in the next 1000 years.
It is speculated that the reason we haven’t found similar devices from the period is that bronze was so valuable that any on the surface would have been melted.
It will be interesting to see how quickly someone reconstructs a working model. Left image is the reconstruction, right image is the Mechanism as found.