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Saw a museum replica of the Antikythera mechanism in Athens and the gears threw me off
I was at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens last month and spent maybe 20 minutes just staring at the Antikythera mechanism display. What got me was how small the gear teeth are, some look thinner than a fingernail, and the thing sat on the sea floor for around 2,000 years. The bronze is all corroded and pitted but you can still trace how the gears meshed together to track the moon and planets. Has anyone here seen the real fragments up close, and did the scale surprise you as much as it surprised me?
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blair_owens9h ago
How close were you able to get to the case? I get why the size would throw you off, since most photos make it look like a big clock when it's really this small handheld thing. That kind of detail surviving on the sea floor for 2,000 years is just wild to me.
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