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

~ Jo Marchant (Author)
Key Phrases: lower back dial, upper back dial, zodiac scale, Science Museum, Michael Wright, Tony Freeth (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Marchant, editor of New Science, relates the century-long struggle of competing amateurs and scientists to understand the secrets of a 2000-year-old clock-like mechanism found in 1901 by Greek divers off the coast of Antikythera, a small island near Tunisia. With new research and interviews, Marchant goes behind the scenes of the National Museum in Athens, which zealously guarded the treasure while overlooking its importance; examines the significant contributions of a London Science Museum assistant curator who spent more than 30 years building models of the device; and the 2006 discoveries made by a group of modern researchers using state-of-the-art X-ray. Beneath its ancient, calcified surfaces they found "delicate cogwheels of all sizes" with perfectly formed triangular teeth, astronomical inscriptions "crammed onto every surviving surface," and a 223-tooth manually-operated turntable that guides the device. Variously described as a calendar computer, a planetarium and an eclipse predictor,Marchant gives clear explanations of the questions and topics involved, including Greek astronomy and clockwork mechanisms. For all they've learned, however, the Antikythera mechanism still retains secrets that may reveal unknown connections between modern and ancient technology; this globe-trotting, era-spanning mystery should absorb armchair scientists of all kinds.
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From Booklist

Discovered a century ago in an ancient Mediterranean shipwreck, the Antikythera mechanism instantly attracted scientific interest. It had gears, which was and remains unique among artifacts from Greco-Roman civilization. So begins Marchant’s mystery about the object, a tale that ends in triumph but not before inveigling individuals who not only puzzled over the device but also became obsessively devoted to figuring it out. Tantalized by the Antikythera mechanism, scholar Derek de Solla Price felt it was the clue with which he could rewrite the history of technology. Price’s conclusions, however, were challenged by a museum curator of Industrial Revolution technologies; he was Michael Wright, who emerges here as the David among academic Goliaths who, by the early 2000s, were closing in on a conclusive interpretation of the Antikythera mechanism. By then, archaeological evidence dated the ship on which it sank to between 70 and 60 BCE and suggested its connection to the astronomer Hipparchus. Science readers will be entranced by Marchant’s vibrant depiction of the characters in this remarkable story of ancient technology. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Printing edition (February 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030681742X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306817427
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Linking the Ancient and the Modern Worlds through a Remarkable Astronomical Mechanism, March 6, 2009

By	Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Weak on current developments and waffly on earlier work, May 28, 2009

By	Kytaline (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ancient And Modern Technology Meet Through Archaeology, March 22, 2009

By	John D. Cofield - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.