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First Computer May Be 2100 Years Old
Scholars may have finally figured out what the Antikythera Mechanism is
By Julian
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Posted May 20, 07 9:02 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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An unknown scientist in the first century B.C. may have invented the world’s first computer. Discovered by Greek divers in 1900 on the bottom of the Aegean Sea near the island of Antikythera, the so called Antikythera Mechanism lay in the National Museum in Athens mistaken for an astrolabe until the late 1950s.
It was then that a scholar, Derek de Solla Price, posited that it might be a computer. Subsequent research, aided by x-ray pictures of the device, seem to suggest Price was right. Another scholar, Michael Wright, has built a working model of the machine, which calcultes the movements of stars and planets and predicts astronomical events like eclipses.