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The ancient Greek computational mechanism
We now know a little more:
After a closer examination of the Antikythera Mechanism, a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.
The device also had a likely connection with Archimedes. Here is the full story.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 30, 2008 at 02:18 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I've been following this story for a while, very interesting stuff. Thanks for the link.
Posted by: Speedmaster at Jul 30, 2008 2:58:40 PM
I remember reading about that device when I was a kid, over 30 years ago. It was discovered about a hundred years ago. The experts are still trying to figure it out?
Posted by: Dirk at Jul 30, 2008 5:13:44 PM
Interesting to note that we didn't have similar machines for measuring time again in Western Civilization until the 14th Century... right around when the Hanseatic league, Venice, and Genoa really took off.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 30, 2008 5:39:39 PM
On the connection between periodicity and commerce (especially manufacturing), readers might be interested in this post explaining how an understanding of synchronization in time was fundamental to the success of Ford's Highland Park plant (and not, as Coase would have it, the relative transactions costs of in-house assembly alone) and Venice's Arsenal before it.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 30, 2008 5:43:58 PM
For more background information on the Antikythera Mechanism, which was recovered from a Bronze Age shipwreck roughly 100 years ago, see here.
Speaking of Michael F. Martin's remarks on manufacturing and commerce, time is even more important today than in Ford's era. Today's fully networked just-in-time inventory control systems combined with computer-driven, automated production technology has a great deal to do with the phenomenal productivity of today's manufacturing-intensive industries. The same non-glamorous industries that are leading U.S. economic performance right now.
Posted by: Ironman at Jul 30, 2008 6:07:06 PM
@Ironman
I completely agree with you. It's really a shame that just-in-time accounting systems are inconsistent with GAAP and IFRS. I've been wondering what group is responsible for this in a public choice sense, and I don't think there is one. I think we've committed a conspiracy against ourselves.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 30, 2008 6:30:05 PM
The mechanism was part of a shipload of loot - the Romans looted the makers, and therefore probably massacred or enslaved the makers. Which explains why the mechanism, and the knowledge and skills to make it, disappeared from history. Where the Romans conquered, progress stopped.
Posted by: James A. Donald at Jul 30, 2008 7:09:45 PM
I was always more of a fan of the Greeks than the Romans. But isn't that a bit of an oversimplification, Mr. Donald? The Romans made real progress in civil engineering, architecture, and law, even if there accomplishments in the arts and sciences paled to those of Athens and Archimedes.
By the way, anybody who doesn't know the story of the battle of Syracuse should look it up and read it right away.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 30, 2008 8:39:13 PM
Michael F. Martin, wouldn't synchronization in time cause reductions in other sorts of transaction costs, since for example, backlogs and bottlenecks require additional management communication? If so, Coase's more general viewpoint on institutions (here, "central timekeeping") still applies.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Jul 30, 2008 8:47:56 PM
You have to wonder at why such an object would be made -- who commissioned it, who thought it would be worth the time, who paid the artisans? Was this gadget destined for sale in some sort of Hellenic Sharper Image store?
Posted by: Stinky at Jul 30, 2008 9:30:00 PM
@Lee A. Arnold
I need to go back and take a closer look at Coase's work. Do you have a particular paper in mind?
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 30, 2008 10:54:19 PM
Lee A. Arnold: The real innovations in manufacturing during the past two decades go well beyond simple synchronization of supply chains.
For example, it's not difficult today to implement a major production line that can absorb many of the effects of supply chain disruptions without requiring significant management action or even additional labor to deal with supply-driven bottlenecks or backlogs to support customer-driven production rates. With that kind of robust system, you can free the individual members of the supply chain network from having to strictly synchronize their own production flows to that of their customers, which allows production costs to be reduced across the entire supply chain.
Posted by: Ironman at Jul 30, 2008 11:05:26 PM
@Michael:
While the Romans certainly didn't borrow ALL of their accomplishments from subject peoples, I have trouble thinking of any signficant Roman innovations after the early first century. If I look at my lists of classical scientists, the Greeks of the second century BC represent the peak. There's a small resurgence in Alexandria in the second century AD, but it's not an exaggeration to say that classical learning died, like Archimedes, on the point of the Roman sword.
Posted by: Cyrus at Jul 30, 2008 11:22:37 PM
@Cyrus
You're making a very strong claim, but I just don't know the history well enough to affirm or deny it. As I said before, I definitely see that there was more originality in Athens and Archimedes than there was in Rome. Perhaps the Greeks were better students of nature? But if learning is defined more broadly to include what is learned not only from nature but also from other peoples' experiments therewith, then I think learning continued in Rome, and at a scale that was never achieved by the Greeks. Law is not poetry, but the Romans were more innovative in law than the Greeks. The same could be said of their work in designing systems of irrigation and roads, for example. You can say that these are not really artistic forms, and there connection to nature is indeed more attenuated. But I think they still count as learning.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 31, 2008 12:05:38 AM
This all got me curious about a favorite historical anachronism of mine -- Ptolemaic Egypt. I'm grateful to have now learned that Archimedes may have spent time in Ptolemaic era Alexandria. Their sense of time have derived from Archimedes. For the uninitiated, Ptolemaic era Egypt was the scene for the first accurate estimate of the circumference of the (round) earth, and also the scene for the execution of contracts of sale for land, complete with references to a recording office.
"I have no claim at all against you in respect of them [the
land]. No person at all nor I myself will be able to exercise
authority over them except you from this day onwards. As for anyone
who shall proceed against you on account of them in my name or in the
name of anyone at all, I shall cause him to be far from you. And I
shall clear it for you from anything at all at any time. To you
belongs their documents, their titles in any place in which they are:
every document which has been drawn up regarding them and every
document by virtue of which I am entitled to in respect of them, they
belong to you and the rights conferred by them. To you belongs that by
virtue of which I am entitled in respect of them. The oath or the
proof which will be imposed upon you in the courthouse in respect of
the rights conferred by the aforementioned document which I have drawn
up for you, to cause me to swear it, I will swear it "
from a demotic script dating to 208 B.C.
Check out the work done by on this if you're interested. Many of the MSS are in Berlin's papyrusammlung, but only a few were on display while I was there in 2006.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 31, 2008 12:44:57 AM
Frankly I prefer R
Posted by: goodnessOfFit at Jul 31, 2008 12:45:48 AM
Michael Martin, "The nature of the firm," 1937. But it's the general idea of an "institution" that his paper leads to: any instituted idea that economizes transformations or transactions, thereby increasing throughput. So the property and contract law that makes the market economy viable is also an institution. Of course the firm is an institution, where there are many ways to reduce transformation and transaction costs, although Coase may have misinterpreted the specifics at one plant. As Ironman points out, the process is continuous, even until older considerations have been made obsolete, such as through technological change affecting production or organization.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Jul 31, 2008 2:44:30 AM
@ Lee A. Arnold
You know I actually went back and reread The Nature of the Firm last night looking for the reference to a central timekeeper and I didn't find it. I'm not saying that the idea is inherent in what Coase was talking about. But I don't see where he expressly calls out the importance of synchronizing the factors of production in time.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 31, 2008 11:17:39 AM
Michael, I'm sorry, I did not mean to mislead you: Coase does not mention timekeeping. I extrapolated from that article. The basic insight is to ask when and where transactions (or transformations) are handled better than the market can do it. His answer came in pursuit of the reason for the existence of the firm. His next famous article on "Social cost" brought into view the fact that transaction costs are always positive and occur almost everywhere (and as Blaug points out, the Coase Theorem is in this sense an impossibility theorem, and a variation on why the Invisible Hand Theorem never holds.) The next question then -- really the important question for all of us -- is what is the nature of cost reductions. There are only four fields in which the reductions can occur: space, time, transference of mass (a.k.a. energy,) and grammar of thought (such as in linguistic or mathematical invention -- which upon reflection usually saves space, time, or energy.) Many cost reductions are not quantifiable, and a larger number of them are not monetized. "Liberty," for example, whatever its other virtues, is also a cost-saving institution. My initial reaction was to your phrase "not, as Coase would have it," because synchronization is a technique that falls under his general rubric. I rather think he sees it clearly. He has written that he believes that the basic insight will rewrite economics.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Jul 31, 2008 1:05:54 PM
@Lee A. Arnold
Thanks for clarifying. I read the Problem of Social Cost over again last night too and didn't find it spelled out there either. But I agree that the costs of aynchronicity in supply and demand are implicit in the Coasean notion of transactions costs. What remains implicit is occasionally valuable to spell out. Sometimes we assume that everybody is seeing the same thing until we do so.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 31, 2008 2:12:34 PM
Nature magazine just put up a video about the Antikythera mechanism with 3-d x-rays and computer animations:
http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/antikythera/
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