With Java animations by Bill Casselman

This page has been translated into Russian.

This column was based on published research by Derek de Solla Price, mainly his article Gears from the Greeks - The Antikythera Mechanism, A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B.C., Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 64, part 7 1974. Recently the Antikythera Research Project, led by Tony Freeth, Alexander Jones and collaborators, has applied new technology, including computed X-ray tomography (like a high-resolution CAT-scan), to the study of the mechanism. It turns out that much of Price's detailed analysis of its internal workings was wrong.