The tabloids are at it again, whapping their porcine tails wildly into the mud so as to splash up a thick brown splatter of lies and mistruths. This time the target of the Old Gray Ho is - no surprise - the Antikythera Mechanism. For those unfamiliar with this remarkable apparatus, it is an ancient Greek contraption discovered in a shipwreck in 1899 by some Mediterranean pearl divers, who used it as a doorstop until a visiting archaeologist stubbed his toe on it during a dirty weekend with one of the divers' wives the following year.Though it has stymied researchers for more than a century, most agree that the Mechanism is a calculating device, an analog precursor to the modern computer. Supposedly constructed by the great Greek astronomer Archimedes (inventor of the Pythagorean Theorem), it is believed to have been used as a calendar to predict solar eclipses as well as regular outbreaks of Olympic Syndrome, a little-known form of star-influenced mass hysteria originating in classical times, in which entire nations drain their physical strength in displays of athletic bravado and jingoism at four-year intervals.
All of which, of course, is barely two-fifths of the story. We had the rare privilege of handling the mechanism during a surgical midnight research raid on the Mechanism's Cardiff laboratory some few years ago (for which we sported a cute mask and a smart black turtleneck), and are thus, as usual, way ahead of the game. Here are some findings about the device that the researchers DON'T want you to know:
- Its calculating properties were used to create many of the world's most useful inventions, such as the hourglass, the sextant, and the mule.
- It contains primitive clockwork porn, expressed metaphorically as the meshing of gears.
- Despite its avowed status as a proto-computer, it employed not the well-known binary system, but a more primitive "singulary" system.
- It could be used for purposes of identity theft, for instance, by clocking someone on the head with it and stealing their clothes. (Needless to say, this is how the phrase "clocking someone on the head" was inspired.)
- Its original power source was a live cobra.
- Earlier versions of the Antikythera Mechanism were so large that they filled up an entire room!
- A small slot dispensed strips of papyrus containing the latest stock-forum quotes.
- It was capable of communicating with other Antikythera Mechanisms across long distances; unfortunately, no other Antikythera Mechanisms were manufactured.
- Archimedes was civilization's first Dungeon Master.
- It had the capability of solving world hunger and curing all disease, but no, man had to go and fuck it up as usual.
- It has Solitaire.
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1 comment:
Sir,
I fear I must question your decision to publicly discuss such sensitive information. Indeed, sir, if Bruce Sterling or (Zeus help us) Neal Stephenson catch wind of this, we could have Hellaspunk on our hands, and it will ALL BE YOUR FAULT. The evening before your raid, when I infiltrated the laboratory in the guise of a seven-foot-tall research assistant, I accrued much the same data as you---including the shocking revelation that Ancient Greek Wikipedia was actually accurate---but in my desire to see literature free of new and older incarnations of the equation:
pre-digital civilization+SF=4000 pg trilogies
I thought it prudent to keep this knowledge to myself. But you, sir, what are you doing? The quest for truth is all fine and good, but if this post results in some sort of neologism involving some snappy one or two syllable Greek thing and the word "punk" and if that neologism results in more precious SF you will have much to answer for, sir.
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