科学家发现古希腊2000年前的计算机(图)


古希腊2000年前的计算机复原图
点击此处查看全部科技图片



考古发现的青铜碎片
点击此处查看全部科技图片

  新浪科技讯 据英国《每日邮报》11月30日报道,长期以来,计算机一直被认为是现代文明的产物。但科学家们最近却发现,古希腊人2000年前就已经拥有了人类的第一台“计算机”。这台计算机不仅可以用于数学计算,还可以精确地跟踪太阳、月亮以及其它行星的运行轨迹。
  这台最古老的计算机是用30余个齿轮组装而成的,材质为青铜器,运算则完全是依

靠手柄来进行摇动。科学家们发现,这台计算机不仅可以进行单纯的数学计算,还可以用于跟踪太阳、月亮甚至其它行星的运行轨迹。更加令人感到神奇的是,计算机的运行精度非常高。揭开这台计算机奥秘的考古学家称,在当时的那个时代,人们一直认为地球是宇宙的中心,古希腊的这台计算机很可能还能计算出水星、金星、木星、火星和土星的运行轨迹。这样的计算机不可能只有一台,其它的到底埋藏在希腊的哪些地方呢?
  考古学家们表示,古希腊的这台计算机技术极为先进,在人类文明历上具有极为重要的历史价值。一定程度上讲,它的历史意义甚至超过了意大利画家达芬奇创作的《蒙娜丽莎》。这台计算机是从海底沉船中打捞上岸的,当时在所有物品中,人们只找到了一些刻有希腊铭文的青铜碎片。随后又发现了一些残片。至此,一套完整的齿轮终于展现在人们面前,其中的数个齿轮还刻有文字。通过高科技的X光射线的CT扫描,考古学家们将这台装置完全复制了出来,并对上面的文字进行了破译解读,从而确认了这台计算机的工作原理。
  英国加的夫大学教授迈克-埃德蒙德斯说,“这套装置到目前为止只发现了一件,因此显得尤其特别和珍贵。它的设计非常精美漂亮,而且在进行天文计算时十分精确。它的巧妙设计和工作原理,简直会让你惊奇得下巴都能掉下来。不管是谁制造的这套装置,他都是绝顶聪明的,里面体现了伟大的智慧。由于其数量极为有限,同时还具有极为重大的历史意义,我认为某种程度上它比达芬奇创作的《蒙娜丽莎》更有价值。我们认为,这台计算机是在公元前100到150年制造的,技术先进的程度比我们先前预想的要高得多。大约直到1000年以后,其他国家才有了类似的计算装置。”
  古希腊的这台神奇计算机发现于1900年。当时一群希腊海绵捕捞者由北非的传统渔场返回到罗得岛附近的瑟梅岛,途中忽然遭到风暴的袭击。他们被吹得偏离了航线,后来终于在克里特岛西北的安蒂基西。他们无意中在这里发现了一艘沉船的遗骸。在这些渔民看来,这艘古代沉船尽管装有许多货物,但最吸引人的物品却是一大堆青铜和大理石雕像,清理沉船的工作一直延续到1901年9月。从这些物品中,找到了一些刻有希腊铭文的青铜碎片和残片。但从一开始,这些发现便引起了争议。有些考古学家坚持认为这件装置太过复杂,不可能出自这艘沉船。有专家认为它是一种测量天体高度的仪器。还有专家认为它来自一架天仪,即一种用来显示行星运行轨道的装置。
  此后,考古学家们经过认真地拆卸和清洗之后,摆在他们面前的许多残片显出了原形,考古学家们很快认定它的价值远远超过了所有雕像。这台机器由活动指针、复杂的刻度盘、旋转的齿轮和刻着文字的金属版组成。经复制发现它有30多个小型齿轮,一种卷动传动装置和一只冠状齿轮,在一侧是一根指轴。指轴一转动,刻度盘便可以以各种不同的速度随之转动。指针被青铜活动版保护起来,上面有长长的铭文供人阅读。主轮转动一圈等于一个太阳年,较小的齿轮则显示太阳和月亮以及其它数颗最重要的恒星上升时的位置。(刘妍)

转自新浪 http://tech.sina.com.cn/d/2006-11-30/14401264937.shtml
根据摩尔定律,10年以后,你手中的IPOD可以存下45年的视频,一辈子都看不完。

查了点相关的英文资料

The Antikythera mechanism
The clockwork computerSep 19th 2002
From The Economist print edition
An ancient piece of clockwork shows the deep roots of modern technology

WHEN a Greek sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny island of Antikythera in 1900, it was the statues lying on the seabed that made the greatest impression on him. He returned to the surface, removed his helmet, and gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women. The ship's cargo of luxury goods also included jewellery, pottery, fine furniture, wine and bronzes dating back to the first century BC. But the most important finds proved to be a few green, corroded lumps—the last remnants of an elaborate mechanical device.
The Antikythera mechanism, as it is now known, was originally housed in a wooden box about the size of a shoebox, with dials on the outside and a complex assembly of bronze gear wheels within. X-ray photographs of the fragments, in which around 30 separate gears can be distinguished, led the late Derek Price, a science historian at Yale University, to conclude that the device was an astronomical computer capable of predicting the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac on any given date. A new analysis, though, suggests that the device was cleverer than Price thought, and reinforces the evidence for his theory of an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology.
Michael Wright, the curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, has based his new analysis on detailed X-rays of the mechanism using a technique called linear tomography. This involves moving an X-ray source, the film and the object being investigated relative to one another, so that only features in a particular plane come into focus. Analysis of the resulting images, carried out in conjunction with Allan Bromley, a computer scientist at Sydney University, found the exact position of each gear, and suggested that Price was wrong in several respects.
In some cases, says Mr Wright, Price seems to have “massaged” the number of teeth on particular gears (most of which are, admittedly, incomplete) in order to arrive at significant astronomical ratios. Price's account also, he says, displays internal contradictions, selective use of evidence and unwarranted speculation. In particular, it postulates an elaborate reversal mechanism to get some gears to turn in the right direction.
Since so little of the mechanism survives, some guesswork is unavoidable. But Mr Wright noticed a fixed boss at the centre of the mechanism's main wheel. To his instrument-maker's eye, this was suggestive of a fixed central gear around which other moving gears could rotate. This does away with the need for Price's reversal mechanism and leads to the idea that the device was specifically designed to model a particular form of “epicyclic” motion.
The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth. Mr Wright found evidence that the Antikythera mechanism would have been able to reproduce the motions of the sun and moon accurately, using an epicyclic model devised by Hipparchus, and of the planets Mercury and Venus, using an epicyclic model derived by Apollonius of Perga. (These models, which predate the mechanism, were subsequently incorporated into the work of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD.)
A device that just modelled the motions of the sun, moon, Mercury and Venus does not make much sense. But if an upper layer of mechanism had been built, and lost, these extra gears could have modelled the motions of the three other planets known at the time—Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In other words, the device may have been able to predict the positions of the known celestial bodies for any given date with a respectable degree of accuracy, using bronze pointers on a circular dial with the constellations of the zodiac running round its edge.
Mr Wright devised a putative model in which the mechanisms for each celestial body stack up like layers in a sandwich, and started building it in his workshop. The completed reconstruction, details of which appeared in an article in the Horological Journal in May, went on display this week at Technopolis, a museum in Athens. By winding a knob on the side, celestial bodies can be made to advance and retreat so that their positions on any chosen date can be determined. Mr Wright says his device could have been built using ancient tools because the ancient Greeks had saws whose teeth were cut using v-shaped files—a task that is similar to the cutting of teeth on a gear wheel. He has even made several examples by hand.
How closely this reconstruction matches up to the original will never be known. The purpose of two dials on the back of the device is still unclear, although one may indicate the year. Nor is the device's purpose obvious: it may have been an astrological computer, used to speed up the casting of horoscopes, though it might just as easily have been a luxury plaything. But Mr Wright is convinced that his epicyclic interpretation is correct, and that the original device modelled the entire known solar system.
The Greeks had a word for itThat tallies with ancient sources that refer to such devices. Cicero, writing in the first century BC, mentions an instrument “recently constructed by our friend Poseidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets.” Archimedes is also said to have made a small planetarium, and two such devices were said to have been rescued from Syracuse when it fell in 212BC. This reconstruction suggests such references can now be taken literally.
It also provides strong support for Price's theory. He believed that the mechanism was strongly suggestive of an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology which, transmitted via the Arab world, formed the basis of European clockmaking techniques. This fits with another, smaller device that was acquired in 1983 by the Science Museum, which models the motions of the sun and moon. Dating from the sixth century AD, it provides a previously missing link between the Antikythera mechanism and later Islamic calendar computers, such as the 13th century example at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. That device, in turn, uses techniques described in a manuscript written by al-Biruni, an Arab astronomer, around 1000AD.

The origins of much modern technology, from railway engines to robots, can be traced back to the elaborate mechanical toys, or automata, that flourished in the 18th century. Those toys, in turn, grew out of the craft of clockmaking. And that craft, like so many other aspects of the modern world, seems to have roots that can be traced right back to ancient Greece.


http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165
根据摩尔定律,10年以后,你手中的IPOD可以存下45年的视频,一辈子都看不完。

TOP

大概是一个根据日期计算太阳系行星和月亮位置的仪器,没看到有数字计算功能,鄙视一下新浪的编辑

还有两份资料就不贴了,感兴趣的自己去看吧
http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera3.htm
http://www.ancientx.com/nm/anmviewer.asp?a=28&z=1
根据摩尔定律,10年以后,你手中的IPOD可以存下45年的视频,一辈子都看不完。

TOP

Gua'uld~~~~~~
冬冤家,我有心将你打,却一个心儿怕;要不打,只恨你这冤家羞人煞;罢罢罢,低眉红了脸儿帕,嫁了吧!

TOP

原帖由 驴子 于 2006-11-30 12:41 发表
Gua'uld~~~~~~

啥意思
根据摩尔定律,10年以后,你手中的IPOD可以存下45年的视频,一辈子都看不完。

TOP

原帖由 我本善良 于 2006-11-30 12:56 发表

啥意思

a kind of E.T. in stargate
in series, it is said that all god in Egypt are Gua'uld people indeed.
冬冤家,我有心将你打,却一个心儿怕;要不打,只恨你这冤家羞人煞;罢罢罢,低眉红了脸儿帕,嫁了吧!

TOP

原帖由 驴子 于 2006-11-30 13:11 发表

a kind of E.T. in stargate
in series, it is said that all god in Egypt are Gua'uld people indeed.

人家是希腊的:naughty:
根据摩尔定律,10年以后,你手中的IPOD可以存下45年的视频,一辈子都看不完。

TOP

原帖由 我本善良 于 2006-11-30 13:27 发表

人家是希腊的:naughty:

so Gua'uld have gone to greece as well.
冬冤家,我有心将你打,却一个心儿怕;要不打,只恨你这冤家羞人煞;罢罢罢,低眉红了脸儿帕,嫁了吧!

TOP

提示: 作者被禁止或删除 内容自动屏蔽
天地兩茫茫,世人向何方,迷中不知路,指南有真相。貧富都一樣,大難無處藏,網開有一面,快快找真相。
.......

TOP

原帖由 天界的传说 于 2006-11-30 13:58 发表
个人理解

现在人类科技界出现的东西在不同时期的史前文明都曾经出现过,
人类的历史只是按着一定的规律和宿命在走.

拜托你先看懂原文再理解
根据摩尔定律,10年以后,你手中的IPOD可以存下45年的视频,一辈子都看不完。

TOP