OK. I just made fortresses and spaceships as a kid with legos .... brilliant example of human ingenuity, both 2,000+ years ago and today.
Some quick excerpts from the Scientific American interview:
" How long did it take to make the device and video?
Andy built the device from scratch in about 30 days. Preproduction took forever—most of the spring and summer. We filmed in Portland for a week in September, then I went back to New York and directed the animators' stop-motion work via daily phone calls and email/video updates for about a month and a half. Postproduction took a few weeks all told. But from very beginning to very end, it took us all of 2010.
So this Lego-built mechanism really works to predict the next solar eclipse?
Absolutely. It predicts solar and lunar eclipses to the exact year, date, and time of day accurate to within two hours, out to about a century or two in the future. Beyond that, mechanical effects like flexion and friction cause drift in the calculations done by the gears, but it is still accurate to the day, if not the exact time. "
Full article - click here
References:
For more, check out Pavlus' behind-the-scenes blog.
Find additional details on the antikythera in Tony Freeth's Scientific American article "Decoding an Ancient Computer," which also appears in "The Best American Science Writing 2010".
