History of Science Online - Course Info - Time tips - Semester at a glance - Weekly assignments at a glance - Timeline - Week 5: Hellenistic Science

The Antikythera Mechanism , ca. 150 BC

The Antikythera mechanism brings together Archimedes' interest in gears and Hipparchos' models for the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets.

Watch at least the first 20 minutes of the NOVA episode, "Ancient Computer" (55 mins, free).

Optional: Read three brief articles on the Antikythera mechanism from the November 2006 issue of Nature:

• Jo Marchant, "In Search of Lost Time," Nature 2006, 444: 534-538.
• François Charette, Archaeology: High Tech from Ancient Greece, Nature 2006, 444: 551-552.
• T. Freeth, Y. Bitsakis, X. Moussas, J. H. Seiradakis, A. Tselikas, H. Mangou, M. Zafeiropoulou, R. Hadland, D. Bate, A. Ramsey, M. Allen, A. Crawley, P. Hockley, T. Malzbender, D. Gelb, W. Ambrisco & M. G. Edmunds, "Decoding the ancient Greek astronomical calendar known as the Antikythera mechanism," Nature 2006: 444: 587-591.

Here are instructions for accessing articles from Nature through the library website. These three articles are also located in the Content area of our course at Desire2Learn.

	HSCI 3013. History of Science to 17th century Kerry Magruder, Instructor, 2004-14 Brent Purkaple, TA Report typos or broken links	Go to this course at Janux spellcheck.net | wordcounter.net Many thanks to the pedagogical model developed in Mythology and Folklore and other online courses by Laura Gibbs, which have been an inspiration for this course.	Academic Calendar
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