Here you can find a complete emulation of the
Antikythera mechanism
on the
Squeak EToys
environment.
Its construction follows the recent findings of the
Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.
I have developed this as
a prototype base for educational activities on the XO machine of the
One Laptop per Child
initiative.
Implementing the mechanism as an EToys application
is a goldmine for educational activities in the following areas:
Astronomy: the motion of bodies; relationships; calendars
Arithmetic: calculating with fractions
Geometry: angles; constructing an ellipse; triangle properties; spirals
Mechanical engineering: gears
Physics: angular velocity; friction
Archeology: ancient greek technology; carbon dating; computer tomography
Computer science: emulation; problem decomposition; graphs; geometric algorithms
and the material
of an invited talk presented at the 2009
USENIX Annual Technical Conference.
Download and Run
From here you can the Antikytera emulator as
open source software,
distributed under the
MIT License
(the one recommended for OLPC applications).
The current version of the application is 45.
To run it you will need the following.
An installation of the Squeak Etoys environment.
You can download Squeak Etoys
from here.
Once you have downloaded the files on your computer and installed Etoys,
run Etoys.
Then, drag and drop the Antikythera.NNN.pr file you downloaded, into
Etoys, to run the Antikythera emulator.
Operation
The mechanism is operated using the following buttons:
The mechanism for the luni-solar Callippic calendar
The infrastructure for the Hipparchos' lunar mechanism
Diagram of the gear relationships
All (known) gears on stage
The Sun and Moon dials on the device's front face
The dials on the device's back face
The emulator running on an OLPC Beta-1 machine.
A differential mechanism proposed in the past (this proposal is not supported by modern evidence).
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Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material on this page created by Diomidis Spinellis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License.
Last modified: 2011-01-23