Antikythera mechanismn.
A mechanical astronomical device believed to have been manufactured in ancient Greece in the first or second century b.c., fragments of which were discovered in 1900 amongst the cargo of an ancient shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera.When intact, the Antikythera mechanism operated via a complicated series of gears and could be used, among other things, to calculate the positions of the sun and the moon (and possibly also those of a number of planets), as well as to predict astronomical phenomena such as eclipses and the phase of the moon.
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Antikythera mechanism1959
1959 Sci. Amer. Apr. 62/3 The Antikythera mechanism is far more sophisticated than any described in classical scientific texts.
1961 Classical Rev. 11 283 The Anticythera ‘mechanism’..reveals for all its brilliance of conception and execution the limitations, and perhaps the very limits, of refined classical engineering.
1974 Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc. 64 60/2 The differential gear may have made its appearance in the Antikythera mechanism through the motivation to exhibit the motions of the Sun and Moon in perfect consistency with the phases of the Moon.
1990 J. Mokyr Lever of Riches ii. 22 In the view of one classical scholar, the special branch of machine design that made the Antikythera mechanism was not representative of the mainstream of invention of the period.
2006 Daily Mirror 1 Dec. 37 The Antikythera Mechanism has baffled experts since 80 fragments were found on the seabed in 1900.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2017).
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n.1959