Maurane Gisiger
As part of the UCL Natural Sciences Innovation Lab, our interdisciplinary project titled “The Making of the Antikythera Mechanism” aimed at producing a replica of the said Antikythera Mechanism and a video series describing the object.
The Antikythera Mechanism is a widely studied but not fully comprehended ancient astronomical instrument. In our project, we brought different disciplines together to provide new insights, notably about the possible uses of the artefact and the technologies required to make this device. Especially with the replica, we want to give a physical intuition to our audience, who by interacting with it could gain a better understanding about its function.
The video series is divided into five episodes, each subdivided into a History of Science, an Astronomy and an Engineering section, to present introductory-level concepts in each subject, giving viewers a better grasp of this complex mechanism. The replica can’t currently be built due to Covid-19 restrictions; however, we hope to construct and exhibit it at UCL during the year. As part of the display, we will expose a poster outlining the steps taken to create our replica as well as further History, Astronomy and Engineering information.
On the first page, we present the Antikythera Mechanism: what it is, what its historical significance is and what it may have been used for. On the second page we develop this last question by presenting evidence from the three disciplines we considered. On the last pages, we describe how we produced the replica, from design to manufacturing (by showing the processes that we intend to use).
We will publish our videos later in September and expect to present our replica at UCL, with the hope that, in addition to the insights we achieve through our project, more people will want to engage in multidisciplinary and Astronomy research.
On the second page, you get an insight from the three subjects we considered (History of Science, Astronomy and Engineering) about possible uses of the mechanism, namely Astrology, Navigation and Teaching. The link to our YouTube channel, where we will soon be posting our video series explaining more about the three subjects and how we can come to these conclusions about the purpose of the device, is made available again under our poster.
On page 3, we ask “What if the Ancient Greeks built the mechanism using today’s technology and materials?”, outlining the steps we took to produce a replica. Furthermore, we expand on the idea of making our outcomes available to the public, as an important feature of our replica will be the casing of transparent acrylic sheets, so that the inner workings of the gearbox are visible. On this slide there is also an image of the theoretical model by Freeth and Jones, 2012, which forms the basis for our replica and shows which gears were inferred from the remaining fragments and which were assumed to have existed to make the mechanism functional.
On the last page, you can find our conclusions, notably that Ancient Greek engineering abilities might have to be re-evaluated. We venture to put forward two hypotheses: on one hand, the Antikythera Mechanism may have been one of many machineries built to model phenomena from the Natural Sciences. Alternatively, it may not have been fully functional, which might explain why no other such device was found as no other would have been built after a failure.
You can then see an extract from the design plans for our replica, which we intend to “put into practice” once the UCL workshops re-open. Aside from that, we also suggest potential for future research, where the fly in the ointment is that illegal private removal of objects from the seabed is a threat to archaeological research.
Acknowledgment: We wish to thank Prof Andrew Gregory (Science and Technologies department) , Dr Steve Fossey (Physics and Astrophysics department) and Dr Adam Wojcik (Mechanical Engineering department) for reviewing the videos and giving their specialist advice to advance our project.