CARDIFF, Wales, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A Welsh-led study has determined an ancient astronomical calculator, built around the end of the second century B.C., is highly sophisticated.
Mike Edmunds and colleagues at Cardiff University, along with Francois Charette of the University of Munich, used imaging and high-resolution X-ray tomography to study fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism -- a bronze mechanical analog computer thought to calculate astronomical positions.
The Greek device contains a complicated arrangement of at least 30 precision, hand-cut bronze gears housed in a wooden case covered in inscriptions. But the device is fragmented, so its specific functions have remained controversial.
The team was able to reconstruct the gear function and double the number of deciphered inscriptions on the computer's casing. The device, the researchers said, is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterward.
The text is astronomical, with many numbers that could be related to planetary motions, and the gears are a mechanical representation of a second-century theory that explained the irregularities of the moon's motion across the sky caused by its elliptical orbit.
The study appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.
