Debby Detering Wordcraft

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Oldest Computer—The Antikythera Mechanism

12.23.2017 by Debby Detering // Leave a Comment

  • Antikythera is the Greek island near where it was found.
  • It predicted lunar and solar eclipses, held a calendar, and signaled the next Olympic Games.
  • When scientists studied the device with x-rays, they discovered you could use it to track the sun, moon, and planets.
  • CT scans—the same procedure that might tell your doctor whether your appendix needs to come out–revealed tiny writing engraved on its parts, not exactly a built-in instruction manual, more like parts labels, but important clues to where it might have been made and what it was supposed to do—enough for scholars now to understand at least some of the workings.
"The first computer" found in shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera
The Antikythera mechanism on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Image credit: Tilemahos Efthimiadis via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 2.0.

The Antikythera Mechanism was found with a 2000-year-old wrecked ship in 1902.  It’s the only one found, but perhaps something similar will turn up elsewhere to answer questions about when it was made, who made it, and did anyone, a thousand years ago, build anything like it?

This model of the Mechanism, built by science modeler Massimo Mogi Vicentini, is an attempt to show what its insides might have looked like 2000 years ago:

Mogi Vicentini via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 2.5

 

Categories // Writing Tags // Research, technology

Eclipse Through a Collander

08.22.2017 by Debby Detering // Leave a Comment

We stayed home for the historic eclipse and watched totality five times on the NASA live-streaming site for which we didn’t need eclipse glasses. We aren’t on the path of totality, but we did feel a slight cooling like when the sun sets, although our sky remained bright blue.

The NASA site offered tips for safe viewing.  One was:  “You can use a kitchen colander for a pinhole view.”

YES!

The colander, such as you might use to drain spaghetti.

I held it over a sheet of white paper.   Our photos show about how much of the sun was eclipsed in our part of Southern California.

Our colander view is fuzzy, but you can see that almost half the sun was eclipsed where we are.

 

 

 

Categories // About Debby Tags // science, technology

Debby’s fiction explores family relationships with mingled conflict and caring and reflects her experience in emergency foster care, often for teenagers abandoned in one way or another.

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    I”ve added adding a page to this blog, “Come Rejoicing!”–if I can get the title on the menu!– where I can comment on not just my own journey, but the journeys of those who inspire me.  Here I can share notes on Scripture and history that mean something to me, and here I hope to […]

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