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ameso — The Antikythera Mechanism on Squeak EToys

Development under EToys 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:

See also the corresponding publication 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.
  1. An installation of the Squeak Etoys environment. You can download Squeak Etoys from here.
  2. The Antikythera emulator project file.
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:

Change Log

Version 045 2009-05-24
Update according to the details published in the Nature 2008 article.
Version 036 2007-03-16
Built according to the description published in the Nature 2006 article.
Version 007 2007-02-21
Built according to Price's book .

Video

Development Pictures

The mechanism for the luni-solar Callippic calendar
The mechanism for the luni-solar Callippic calendar

The infrastructure for the Hipparchos' lunar mechanism
The infrastructure for the Hipparchos' lunar mechanism

Diagram of the gear relationships
Diagram of the gear relationships

All gears
All (known) gears on stage

Front face dials
The Sun and Moon dials on the device's front face

Back face dials
The dials on the device's back face

The emulator on the OLPC
The emulator running on an OLPC Beta-1 machine.

Differential mechanism
A differential mechanism proposed in the past (this proposal is not supported by modern evidence).

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Last modified: 2011-01-23