Archaeology & History

Real-life 'Dial of Destiny' may have gotten jammed all the time

By T.K. Randall
April 10, 2025 ·  4 comments

Did the Antikythera mechanism ever work properly ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Joyofmuseums Dating back around 2,000 years, the Antikythera mechanism - originally found in a shipwreck by sponge divers in 1901 - is one of the most fascinating archaeological artifacts ever discovered.

How the ancient Greeks developed the device, which is filled with a staggeringly intricate array of gears, remains something of a mystery - especially given the time period in which it was built.

Over the years, experts have spent countless hours examining the device to determine what it was used for, with the prevailing theory being that it was some form of early astronomical computer.

Despite its complexities, however, a more recent study has concluded that the Antikythera mechanism may have in fact jammed on a regular basis, making it very awkward and annoying to use.

The reason for this all comes down to errors in the manufacture of its gearing system.It would have been possible to crank the mechanism to around four months in the future, but anything more and it would have jammed - requiring a complex and lengthy reset that has been likened to trying to reset a printer that has stopped working because it has become jammed up with paper.

So why would its creators have built something that was so inherently flawed ?

One possibility is that the mechanism was intended as more of a toy than a tool, though it is perhaps more likely that the device had simply warped over the 2,000 years it was sitting on the ocean floor.

It has also been suggested that the scans of the device on which the research was based were not accurate enough and that the device would have worked properly when it was new.

Whatever the case, the mechanism still represents the pinnacle of ancient engineering expertise.

Source: Live Science | Comments (4)

Tags: Antikythera