CT scans read gears and inscriptions inside the Antikythera Mechanism

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Key facts

• Derek de Solla Price proposed in 1959 that the Antikythera mechanism was an ancient astronomical calculator using gears to track the heavens.
• In 1971 Price and radiographer Charalambos Karakalos used X-rays to examine the gears hidden inside the corroded bronze lump.
• In 2005 a research team including Tony Freeth and Mike Edmunds produced high-resolution CT scans that rendered the mechanism in three dimensions, revealing the number of internal gears and engraved text that earlier X-rays had missed.
• 82 surviving fragments are displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
• The device was probably operated by hand through a crank or knob on its side; one pointer tracked the Sun through the constellations and another the Moon, while a small half-light, half-dark ball showed lunar phase on any given night.
• Because a single crank turn could run the sky forward or backward, the object is often called the first computer, an analog computer calculating through bronze gears.
• Only about a third of the mechanism survives; parts of the calendars, eclipse displays and lunar gearing remain, while much of the machinery beyond the planetary display is missing.

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