Customer Reviews

Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The "Antikythera Mechanism" has baffled archeologists and scientists for more than a century. Discovered in an ancient Greek shipwreck in 1901 near the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, it is the first known mechanical computer in human history. It is rumored to have been used to calculate astronomical positions, and probably dates to the first century before the Common Era (BCE).

The "Antikythera Mechanism" was remarkable in that its many gears betray a complexity not found elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world. Not until the high Medieval era would technological artifacts of similar complexity be found. With more than 30 gears, there is some difference of opinion on the number, it had the potential to enter a date and the mechanism could calculate the position of the Sun, Moon, or the other planets. It also had the capability to predict lunar and solar eclipses.

Jo Marchant, a well-known journalist and the editor of "New Scientist," has written a fascinating account of the discovery of this remarkable relic, its reconstruction, and the process of discovery of scientists gradually coming to understand its use. Made of bronze and found in pieces on the sea floor, it took considerable time to put it back together and to get it to work.

Hundreds of scholars have investigated the "Antikythera Mechanism," and employed high-technology analysis to understand the artifact. Even so, it took a century to unlock its secrets. Michael Wright, curator at the Science Museum in London, worked for more than two decades to build a working model of the artifact, using only tools and methods known to have been available in ancient Greece. Roger Hadland, an engineering entrepreneur, invested heavily to develop high-technology instruments, including a special X-ray machine, to image the object. These and others contributed to a long-term effort to learn the nature of this remarkable ancient machine.

Part detective story as well as a record of remarkable and diligent scientific investigation, "Decoding the Heavens" is a wonderfully researched and written exploration of efforts in the modern era to learn more about activities of the ancient world.

In 1900 an ancient shipwreck was discovered off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. Divers quickly brought up statues and other readily recognizable pieces, along with, almost as an afterthought, a strange lump of something metallic which at first seemed worthless. Then startled archaeologists and scientists noticed gears and cogs and realized that something far more interesting than any statue had been uncovered. The Antikythera mechanism was to perplex and intrigue investigators throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Jo Marchant, a science writer for Nature and other scientific journals, has the gift of writing clearly and excitingly about subjects which might seem impenetrably obscure to laymen. Decoding the Heavens is her account of the long process of determining what the Antikythera Mechanism was designed to do, how it actually functioned, and who might have been its original designer. She is able to give life to the succession of highly intelligent and sometimes irascible and eccentric investigators who spent much of their lives on the Antikythera Mechanism. She is also able to explain the complexities of modern technological developments which enabled the investigators to finally unravel the secrets of the Mechanism.

I really enjoyed Decoding the Heavens, particularly the parts in which Marchant speculates on who might have been the Mechanism's original designer. While I wish a map of the eastern Mediterranean had been included to help pinpoint Antikythera, Rhodes, Corinth, Syracuse, and the many other places mentioned in the book, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone interested in the Greek and Roman world or in ancient and modern technology.

Below is a different review of the same book, which I wrote for 'Antiquarian Horology':

JO MARCHANT,Decoding the Heavens :

A 2,000-Year-Old Computer and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets, published by Da Capo Press, Cambridge MA, 2009, hardcover. Also available in a UK edition as Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer. Or borrow from the NAWCC Library in Columbia (Members only)

Most students of the history of timekeeping machinery will have come across various pieces of information on the Antikythera mechanism in their reading and recall the outline account of its discovery. In the fall of the year 1900, the Greek Captain Dimitros Kontos and his crew of sponge divers stumbled upon a shipwreck from antiquity off the island of Antikythera, and thereby started the science of underwater archeology. In addition to a large number of statues and other artifacts, one recovered item was completely different. It consisted of several fragments of a very complex, geared, bronze mechanism with mysterious inscriptions. Whatever that object was, it was destined to substantially rewrite the history of technology.

The book under review is an up-to-date, detailed retelling of the story of this mechanism, its discovery, its interpretation and the search for its function. The author incorporates the discoveries and new theories that have been developed about the Antikythera mechanism during the last several years.

Michael Wright, formerly of the London Science Museum, has constructed a new replica and published his findings in this magazine and elsewhere. Regular readers of Antiquarian Horology are probably familiar with his three major articles on the subject in 2003 (Vol. 27, pp. 270-279), 2005 (Vol.29, pp. 51-63) and 2006 (Vol.29, pp. 319-329), titled `Epicyclic gearing and the Antikythera Mechanism, Part I & II' and `The Antikythera Mechanism and the Early History of the Moon-Phase Display'. Completely independently, British scholars Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth have also become obsessed with decoding the mechanism, just like Derek de Solla Price of Princeton University did half a century earlier. And -most importantly- a Greek based multidisciplinary research team agreed to analyze the object in detail using newly developed, state-of-the art American high energy X-ray technology, which allowed for the first time to examine the inside of the object in amazing detail, yielding new teeth counts and additional ancient inscriptions. Much of this research is ongoing, and every few months additional inscriptions are deciphered, new papers are published, and new physical models are built or existing ones are modified.

This book is not a scholarly treatment of the subject matter. The author is not a scientist publishing new scholarly insights, but a journalist telling a compelling story. In many ways this book reminded this reviewer of Dava Sobel's bestseller Longitude; there, as well, the focus was not primarily on the technical specifics of the physical artifact, but on the `human interest story' behind the object, the story of the struggles of Harrison and Gould. Here, too, the author writes an eminently readable account of the numerous twists and dead ends which various scientists have encountered in researching the functionality of the mechanism. She focuses on the passions and personalities of the scholars, as much as she does on the intricacies of the mechanism, which - as it turns out- is not a `timekeeper' in the narrower sense of the word, but a sophisticated `time calculator', specifically a planetary calculator. `Planets' is here used in Ptolemy's sense, i.e. including sun and moon, and the machine apparently uses epicyclic gearing, the 19 year metonic cycle, and a spiral display.

The main characters in the book are scholars like De Solla Price, Bromley, Wright, Edmunds and Freeth, and a large supporting cast of Greek museum officials, archeologists, philologists and "cryptographers". These people all become alive in the book, as a captivating story of discovery is told, with side plots involving rivalries, egos and national pride. This is a book about both the 'process' of decoding the mechanism and the egos of the key players, rather than a detailed account of the mechanism itself. This reviewer found the book fascinating and informative, mainly due to the fact that virtually everything else that has been published on the history of technology typically covers the objects themselves, and ignores the process of scholarship and the personalities involved.

The book has triggered a wave of criticism from various scholars involved in the recent discoveries. A recent Greek translation of the book contains 84 corrective footnotes; for a list see the Research Project's webpage [...] where a pdf can be downloaded regarding so-called `errors' in Merchant's text. Many of these seem to concern different interpretation of data, or points of Greek national pride. To this reviewer this latest controversy just reinforces one of the key themes of the book: there is hardly a historic object in the history of technology which has triggered as many passions as the Antikythera mechanism.
[...]

Too many reviewers have summarized the content to need another precis, so I just highlight. Objections to the personal histories Marchant gives of those who, over a century, have investigated the Antikythera device miss the point: the book is not an analysis of their technical data, but a casual history of the frustrations and succeses of their studies and an explanation of their thinking. And a compelling one: the term "Page-turner" is usually associated with fiction, but I really couldn't put this one down.

The notes and index are reasonable for the material presented. But there is a major drawback: the story of those who elucidated the workings of the contraption necessarily involves complicated descriptions of astronomical theory, mechanical parts, and analytical instruments, and these are almost impossible to follow without figures. The black-and-white photos of the men and their models are interesting enough, but the book desperately needs charts and diagrams to help explain it all. If the book gets another edition (and it should), that is something to work on.

Sorry, only three.

This is a book that contains just about everything: adventure, exploration, archaeology, ancient technology, detective work, science, astronomy, ancient history and modern technology pushed to its limits. The author has done an excellent job of recounting the history and ongoing saga of the Antikythera mechanism by weaving all of the above ingredients together, along with plenty of excitement, intrigue, frustration and some deception. The important roles of the key people who have been involved with this device since its discovery at the turn of the twentieth century are all very prominently described.

Unfortunately, a few errors have crept in. On page 30, reference is made to "0 AD". This must surely be a misprint since there was never a year 0 (let alone 0 AD). On page 99, some statements about Rutherford and Einstein are incorrect. Rutherford never split the atom nor did he use accelerators (he used alpha emitting radionuclides to probe the structure of the atom). And Einstein did not rely on experimental results to develop his famous mass-energy equivalence formula; he developed it on purely theoretical grounds as part of his Special Theory of Relativity published in 1905. On page 134, ten lines from the bottom, thulium-170 has one more neutron than thulium-169, not an extra proton as stated here. On page 227, near the middle, a description of X-ray production is given. However, what is described is the production of fluorescence X-rays. These are not energetic enough for X-Tek's purposes. The much more energetic X-rays that were used are bremsstrahlung X-rays; these are produced directly from the high energy electrons in the initial beam and are thus much more energetic and penetrating.

Despite the fact that these errors may be misleading and occasionally annoying, they do not detract from the main essence of this fascinating story. For that reason, I still gave the book five stars. The writing style is clear, friendly, accessible and very engaging. This book can be enjoyed by anyone, but ancient history/technology/astronomy buffs will likely relish it the most.

Most people would not have heard of the Antikythera Mechanism - it is a 2000 year old device which was discovered in 1900 in an ancient ship wreck close to the island of Antikythera between Cape Malea and Crete in the Mediterranean. The device was so much damaged and in many fragments of corroded lumps that it could be fully deciphered only recently using the latest microfocus X-ray imaging and computed tomography (CT). We now understand that it was meant to be used as complex scientific calculator (or an analog computer) for calculating astronomical positions.

In a fascinating story written more like a detective novel, Jo Marchant takes us through the discovery of this device from the ship wreck by sponge divers, the early futile attempts in figuring out what the device was, the years it spent in anonymity in the Athens archeological museum, the laborious efforts by some scientists in the last few decades who figured out parts of it, and the final culmination of its near complete understanding by 2008 when better technologies were available.

Written very well, with simple and clear explanations of the basic science involved the author is able to bring out clearly the trials and tribulations involved in scientific research. In addition, the author succeeds in bringing out the excitement of solving a mystery and educating the reader of the gap in our understanding of the progress made by the ancient greek scientists two thousand years ago. The Antikythera Mechanism not only proves that complex geared mechanisms existed (till recently thought be invented in the 18th century) then but also that they were in rather common use because of the detailed instructions provided in the device for enabling its operation by the layman.

I also very much liked the author's attempt to figure out who in the ancient greek world would have devised such a mechanism and how it could have ended in the ship wreck. The logic as well as the detailed research makes the book a pleasure to read.

No one knew what it actually was. The calendar/computer was found on a dive off Antikythera and sat in a musuem for decades. Few studied it and even fewer knew what it was. As best speculation can be, some think it was a gift or novelty for a rich person to calculate star, sun and lunar movement - time. Gears rotate and line up with precision. Marchant does an excellent job in not only explaining the history of the device, but how the ancients would use to calculate and construct it. A 2006 xray of the device gave us our best understanding. Overall, outstanding read for several subjects, including: celestial movement, Greco-Roman culture, navigation, and museum investigations.

I picked this book up in a Maruzen in Tokyo hoping to use it in a class at Waseda University. I like books that contain good vocabulary and that excite the reader's interest so that my super-bright students will stay interested. This book let me down on the vocabulary side of things, but got me hooked on the drama that surrounds the "Antikythera mechanism," and what it means to our understanding of the sophistication of the ancient Greeks. Actually, the story reminds me a bit of the decoding of Maya glyphs. The same sort of geniuses are attracted to intellectual challenges like these, and with the talent comes the ego. Marchant apparently stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest when he chronicled this "human all too human" side of the story, and that's unfortunate, because I found this book to be an excellent read and a good introduction to the subject. Marchant took my intellect and my imagination to places I hadn't been before, and opened up the subjects of Hero, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Cicero, Hipparchus, Ctesibius, and ancient ideas of astronomy and mechanics in ways that were helpful. For that I am certain that I got my money's worth and more from his research.

This book traces the history of the antikythera mechanism and the ultimate decoding of it. It is a fascinating read. It feels like reading a detective novel as the researchers uncover its secrets. There is also a wonderful cast of ancient characters,

On page 302, about half way through the acknowledgments, the author admits that five principal researchers felt unable... to be involved in any way" in the writing of this book. I wish I'd known that before I bought it.

The absence of five principal sources explains why the description of recent work is vague. It might also explain why the earlier sections of the book contain so much padding: pages of waffle about dinosaurs, nuclear bomb tests, steam punk, and the Emperor Augustus.

Then there are the improbably expressed private thoughts and conversations, which can't be verified because the author does not disclose her sources. That's a virtue in an investigative journalist. In a science writer it's just sloppy.

The author tries to keep her complex subject matter under control by presenting it as a series of stories about the researchers. This doesn't work. The characters are less human than the Thunderbirds and their adventures are much less exciting.

I've given the book one star for its account of some of the history of both astronomy and the mechanism. The author also deserves credit for recognizing the intrinsic fascination of the subject. This seems to be her first book. That's a shame: with a bit more experience she might have done something much better.

Overall, very disappointing.