TIL ancient Greeks built the Antikythera Mechanism, a gear-driven machine that could calculate solar and lunar cycles, proving advanced scientific knowledge existed long before the modern era.

Rebuilding with period-correct tools and techniques. At least, as best as can be pulled together based on archaeology and the scant documentation we have from the time. The videos make it very clear where he's taking license and where he's not, which makes his already top-shelf presentation style that much more entertaining.

This project has also taken forever due to our host taking breaks to work with people on actual peer-reviewed publications about all this. It's really an enormous project that is contributing to the intersection of engineering and archaeology in profound ways.

Such a good series, I could watch it for hours

No reason to develop steam if you have tons of slaves.

It's a computer in the computus sense

it's a bit more mechanically complex than that, it can predict moon phases and eclipses for an entire 19-year metonic cycle. the leading theories right now is that it was a prestige job, an expensive gift made by a master craftsman to show off. the clickspring video series linked in the thread is a really interesting look into it, especially since Chris who runs the channel straight up took a break from building the thing for a year to join a research project about the historical context of the mechanism at his local university.