Researchers Have Found When the Antikythera Mechanism Stopped Working

The Antikythera Mechanism is known as the world first computer. It was used to calculate the movement of stars, presumably to navigate the oceans.

Now researchers think they have found out the date in which it stopped working. IT people will say “did you try turning it off and on again”, but odds are it sank with its ship at that date.

And now what you’ve all been waiting for……….

Aristeidis Voulgaris of the Thessaloniki Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Greece supposes the calibration date was around 23 December 178 BC.

It’s close to impossible to put an exact date on it but even coming close is a really cool piece of fact. Other independent calculations have been made by other researchers, which place the device’s calibration closer to 204 BC.

Either way it’s one heck of an old computer, general consensus is that it was built some time between 200 BC and 60 BC.

It’s all guess work, of course based on research. But now we’re a bit closer to knowing when this PC booted for the last time. ;p

Above is reconstruction of what it probably looked like when new!