The Final Date of the Antikythera Mechanism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2447-2158.i12p136-152Keywords:
Epoch of the Antikythera mechanism, End date of the Antikythera mechanism, Metonic pointer, pin and slot device, eclipse predictor, lunar anomalyAbstract
This article presents the investigations by Carman (2017), which demonstrate the date of March 5, 193 B.C.E., or an anomalistic month earlier, as the last time the Antikythera Mechanism crank was turned, some time before the sinking.
To argue his proposal, this researcher considered two dates - both corresponding to the year 205 B.C.E., - already obtained from the data analyzed in the later displays of the apparatus; Metonic (top) and Saros (bottom), some pointers identified by CT scans, and remains of some of the fragments to support your investigation.
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References
A. Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
C. Carman and J. Evans, “On the Epoch of the Antikythera Mechanism and Its Eclipse Predictor,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 68, 2014.
D. de Solla Price, “Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism – A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B.C.,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 66(7), 1975, pp. 1–19, deduced with a probably incorrect argument that the date is in the 1980s bce; C. Carman and J. Evans, “On the Epoch of the Antikythera Mechanism and Its Eclipse Predictor,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 68, 2014.
Fred Espenak’s catalog of the eclipses of solar Saros series 44 at <https://eclipsewise.com/solar/SEsaros/SEsaros044.html>
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T. Freeth, A. Jones, J.M. Steele and Y. Bitsakis, “Calendars with Olympiad Display and Eclipse Prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism,” Nature, 454, 2008.
T. Freeth, Y. Bitsakis, X. Moussas, J.H. Seiradakis, A. Tselikas, H. Mangou, M. Zafeiropolou, R. Hadland, D. Bate, A. Ramsey, M. Allen, A. Crawley, P. Hockley, T. Malzbender, D. Gelb, W. Ambrisco and M.G. Edmunds, “Decoding the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculator Known as the Antikythera Mechanism,” Nature, 444, 2006, pp. 587–91.
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