Used in a sentence: "In case you aren't familiar with the Antikythera Mechanism, just know that it ain't yo momma's VIC-20."
Or your grand-momma's ... or your great-grand-momma's ... or whatever classification of your momma equates to a maternal relative from two thousand years ago, which is when it was created.
And if "VIC-20" means nothing to you, then clearly you weren't a child of the eighties, when Commodore put out one of its earliest versions of the personal computer. (I played the game Rabbit Chaser off of a cassette tape that plugged into it -- the precursor of a floppy disk -- which is in itself something you young kids might have never seen.)
Oh -- and if "Antikythera Mechanism" means nothing to you, it's only the world's oldest computer -- and it was in the news again because scientists have cracked the code to confirm that it was indeed an astronomical guide consisting of gears and hand-cranks and such because NOW they have figured out that it came with a user's guide of sorts.
What is still to be resolved is whether it was obsolete every few months when new Antikythera Mechanisms came out on slightly bigger pieces of rock with more choices of colors.
AN INTRO TO THE MECHANISM:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/468496a.html
MORE ON THE MECHANISM:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/decoding-antikythera-mechanism-first-computer-180953979/?no-ist
THE LATEST ON THE MECHANISM:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ancient-greek-computer-came-with-a-user-guide/
No comments:
Post a Comment