From "Nature" (November 2006, press release):
An ancient astronomical calculator, built around the end of the second century BC, was unexpectedly sophisticated, a study in this week's Nature suggests.
Mike G. Edmunds and colleagues 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 inside a wooden case covered in inscriptions. But the device is fragmented, so its specific functions have remained controversial. The team were able to reconstruct the gear function and double the number of deciphered inscriptions on the computer's casing. The device, they say, is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards.
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.
CONTACT: Mike G. Edmunds (Cardiff University, UK).
You can download here the submitted version of the article and the Supplementary Notes
Read more on Nature's Website here and here.