Wanderings: The Antikythera Mechanism

February 17, 2026

A bike tour is always a hood way to see a city. Dimitros (1) led us a Dutch family past the Acropolis, then up Observatory Hill (2), offering fine views over the city. The Psirri district was formerly an industrial area, transformed into an artsy district by the cheap rent. Rolling through Monistiraki Square, remnants of all periods of Greek History were visible (left to right): Greek Republic bell tower, Byzantine church, Ottoman Mosque, Roman Hadrian's Library, Ancient Greek Acropolis, and the modern metro station.

Rolling east, the modern resurrection of the Olympics games in 1896 was held at the marble Olympic Stadium. Nearby is the Presidential Palace (3). We end the tour at Hadrian's Gate, with its iconic view of the Acropolis through the Arch.

In 1901, sponge divers found a shipwreck off the small Greek island of Antikythera. They hauled up statues and sculptures, and a clump of brass wheels. Sent to the National Museum of Archeology, no-one knew quite what to make of the clump of brass until 3-D X-ray images were made of the brass clumps in 2005. What was revealed was a complex interconnected system of 62 different brass cogs, and Greek lettering explaining the use of the device. The mechanical device kept track of the position and phase of the moon, the five known planets (visible to the naked eye are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) (4), and even predicted solar eclipses. The device has been found to highly accurate, suggesting detailed observations over decades, followed by the ability to translate these observations into a finely-tuned mechanical device. Dated to the first century B.C.E., the Antikythera Mechanism predates the previous earliest known similar mechanical devices by over a thousand years (5), as is known as the world's first analog computer.

The mechanism and various modern reproductions are housed in the Archeological Museum north of the city center. A long wait to enter awaited us on this Tuesday, when the museum is open late. We found the hall with the mechanism, then wandered through the museum enjoying various other exhibits, including a (smaller scale) reproduction of the statue of Athena formerly present in the Parthenon.

(1) Unusually for Greeks, he has blue eyes and blond hair. His long hair and beard make him look like images of Poseidon.

(2) Dimitros pointed out that the Greeks often having simple naming conventions. The hill with the Observatory is Observatory Hill, the office tower in Pireaus is the Pireaus Tower.

(3) Greece voted out its former royal family in a referendum in 1974 in favor of an (largely ceremonial) elected president.

(4) The word planet is derived from planētēs, the Ancient Greek word for wanderer, as the planets wandered among the background stars.

(5) Knowledge really can be lost when Empires fall.