it’s just an astrolabe. a very old one sure, but it’s always silly to me seeing all the various descriptions of this thing in these articles over the 20 years or so I’ve been seeing it posted. it’s not a computer either. or a calculator. it’s just a very old astrolabe for navigating at sea.
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.
it’s just an astrolabe. a very old one sure, but it’s always silly to me seeing all the various descriptions of this thing in these articles over the 20 years or so I’ve been seeing it posted. it’s not a computer either. or a calculator. it’s just a very old astrolabe for navigating at sea.
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.