This week's issue of New Scientist includes a feature I've written about the Antikythera mechanism, you can read it for free here. I wrote a long article about this 2000-year-old device for Nature a couple of years ago, which described researchers' efforts to decode it. I wanted to do something different this time so I focused on the possibility that Archimedes could have been the original inventor of this technology (as suggested by new readings of the inscriptions published this summer) and on how astronomical models like the Antikythera mechanism existed alongside a parallel tradition of modelling living creatures such as people, animals and birds. These models affirmed the ancient Greeks' idea of a divine order, as well as being used to demonstrate basic physical laws in pneumatics and hydraulics. The Greeks have often been derided as wasting their technical ingenuity on mere toys, but as I say in the feature, these models weren't toys, they were a route to understanding and demonstrating the nature of the universe - they represented a way to get closer to the true meaning of things. To what better use could technology be put?
New Scientist also has a souped-up version (see above) of the video I posted a couple of weeks ago showing the first complete reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism, plus some new images and graphics. The Guardian has picked up on the video today as well, with this blog post. "I defy you not to be amazed," says Guardian science correspondent James Randerson.