(February 9, 2013 at 8:29 am)Zone Wrote: It's a computer according to Wikipedia anyway. Probably because was used for astrological calculations rather than just telling the time.

No it isn't. It isn't used for any calculations, it cannot perform them, it's only a mechanical calendar.

Quote:It's still advanced for 200 BC or whenever it was, nothing like that would be built again until the after the Renaissance 1800 years later.

c. 100BC. But no, it wasn't "advanced". It was one of the most advanced things they had, but it would have been based off the mechanics of the Archimedes odometer. And I really doubt that we found the "only one" ever built, I believe there would have been more. The "Byzantine Sundial Calendar" c. late 600's AD/early 700's AD. It uses the same types of gears as the AM (although not as many). So your argument that the technology wasn't seen for 1800 years is incorrect, we know that the technology was used at least from the time of Archimedes to the time the Byzantine Sundial Calendar was made (2nd century BC-5th century AD).

---

Excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (in India today) found radioactive skeletons from 2500 BC. Not only is that the carbon date, that's the believed contemporary date of the city. The cities were wiped out entirely. Buildings were destroyed, foundations were found fused together by intense heat. Some believe the site is not 4,500 years old, but 8,000-12,000 years old (carbon dating isn't as accurate for radioactive material). Some archologists believe that this, and other examples is undeniable evidence of ancient atomic blasts.

(February 9, 2013 at 8:20 am)Aractus Wrote: Big Ben is far more impressive technologically and mechanically, it contains more gears/moving parts than the AM does, do you think that makes Big Ben a computer?

No, no and no, respectively. Big Ben is huge bell that goes "BONG" with the hour. It doesn't need all that many moving parts.

(February 9, 2013 at 12:19 pm)Zone Wrote: There's a calender on there but it was used to calculate data not just display a date and time. This would make it a computer albeit a clockwork computer.

Zone, it wasn't used to calculate any data - I don't know how to make that any clearer to you. It had a yearly calendar, it had a lunar calendar, and it appeared to also contain solar calendars, it's just a calendar, that's it.

Quote:It's generally agreed that the technology used was way ahead of it's time.

By who's standards was it used "ahead of its time"? It uses the same gears that Archimedes used for an odometer 100 years previously, but just more of them. Thus we already knew the technology existed at the time, but until we found the AM we didn't know that such "complicated" calendars existed. It would have been very expensive, but there's nothing about it that is out of place for Greece/Egypt at the time I'm afraid.

Quote:"Believed to operate by crank and containing inter-meshing gears, the mechanism could be used to calculate eclipses and moon cycles. The technology was comparable to astronomical clocks that only appeared some 1,600 years later."

1. It's not truly a clock, it's a calendar. It doesn't contain its own timing mechanism, if it used one it would have been connected to an external water-dripping mechanism.
2. It does not perform any calculations. It doesn't calculate moon cycles, it tracks the lunar cycle - that's a calendar not a computer.
3. It is not a computer and cannot be described as a computer.
4. It doesn't even contain "clockwork" as you claim it does, it only contains gear wheels. I don't know why people describe the AM as clockwork, clockwork needs to at least contain springs or another mechanism to enable to device to run according to its own "clock", the AM doesn't contain this, it only contains the gears, it was either a hand-operated calendar, or the calendar ticked over using a water-based external "clock" mechanism, in either case in and of itself it isn't even clockwork.
5. It isn't "ahead of its time". Archimedes already invented the gears required to make it work, all it needed was an engineer to design a gear-based calendar that would accurately keep track of the relevant cycles to be displayed on the calendar.

Just because you read it on Wikipedia doesn't make it true.

A wind-up toy car is clockwork since it runs on its own when you let it go. It's more complicated then could have been made in ancient Greece/Egypt at the time of the AM. Do you think a wind-up toy car performs calculations and is a computer?

posers!

I'm sorry, I should have known better than the criticize the teachings of the Atheist Church. Carry on.

I don't really see why it matters what it's meant to be. But it was an advanced piece of engineering for it's time, people living in say 1600 would have been impressed by it. It would be like someone making a piece of technology today that someone living in 3613 would be impressed by, assuming it isn't some kind of post apocalptic future.