[20] In 2005, a team from Cardiff University used computer X-ray tomography and high resolution scanning to image inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing.

[31] Captain Dimitrios Kontos (Δημήτριος Κοντός) and a crew of sponge divers from Symi island discovered the Antikythera wreck in early 1900, and recovered artefacts during the first expedition with the Hellenic Royal Navy, in 1900–01.

[32] This wreck of a Roman cargo ship was found at a depth of 45 metres (148 ft) off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera.

The team retrieved numerous large objects, including bronze and marble statues, pottery, unique glassware, jewellery, coins, and the mechanism.

The mechanism appeared to be a lump of corroded bronze and wood; it went unnoticed for two years, while museum staff worked on piecing together more obvious treasures, such as the statues.

[35][36] Investigations into the object lapsed until British science historian and Yale University professor Derek J. de Solla Price became interested in 1951.

[44] Another theory suggests that coins found by Jacques Cousteau at the wreck site in the 1970s date to the time of the device's construction, and posits that its origin may have been from the ancient Greek city of Pergamon,[45] home of the Library of Pergamum.

[46] The ship carrying the device contained vases in the Rhodian style, leading to a hypothesis that it was constructed at an academy founded by Stoic philosopher Posidonius on that Greek island.

[29][30] Machines with similar complexity did not appear again until the fourteenth century, with early examples being astronomical clocks of Richard of Wallingford and Giovanni de' Dondi.

[17]: 7 Information on the specific data obtained from the fragments is detailed in the supplement to the 2006 Nature article from Freeth et al.[6] On the front face of the mechanism, there is a fixed ring dial representing the ecliptic, the twelve zodiacal signs marked off with equal 30-degree sectors.

Woan and Bayley calculate 354–355 intervals using two different methods, confirming with higher accuracy the Budiselic et al. findings and noting that "365 holes is not plausible".

[58] Malin and Dickens' best estimate is 352.3±1.5 and concluded that the number of holes (N) "has to be integral and the SE (standard error) of 1.5 indicates that there is less than a 5% probability that N is not one of the six values in the range 350 to 355.

Movement and registration of the ring relative to the underlying holes served to facilitate both a 1-in-76-year Callippic cycle correction, as well as convenient lunisolar intercalation.

[9] Inscriptions on the instrument closely match the names of the months that are used on calendars from Epirus in northwestern Greece and with the island of Corfu, which in antiquity was known as Corcyra.

Based on the distribution of the times of the eclipses, it has been argued the start-up date of the Saros dial was shortly after the astronomical new moon of 28 April 205 BC.

170 AD)—hundreds of years after the apparent construction date of the mechanism—carried forward with more epicycles, and was more accurate predicting the positions of planets than the view of Copernicus (1473–1543), until Kepler (1571–1630) introduced the possibility that orbits are ellipses.

[7] Due to advances in imaging and X-ray technology, it is now possible to know the precise number of teeth and size of the gears within the located fragments.

Over an entire revolution the average velocities are the same, but the fast-slow variation models the effects of the elliptical orbit of the Moon, in consequence of Kepler's second and third laws.

And let the Sun be golden, the Moon silver, Kronos [Saturn] of obsidian, Ares [Mars] of reddish onyx, Aphrodite [Venus] lapis lazuli veined with gold, Hermes [Mercury] turquoise; let Zeus [Jupiter] be of (whitish?)

[7] In short, the Antikythera Mechanism was a machine designed to predict celestial phenomena according to the sophisticated astronomical theories current in its day, the sole witness to a lost history of brilliant engineering, a conception of pure genius, one of the great wonders of the ancient world—but it didn't really work very well!

[7][83]While the device may have struggled with inaccuracies, due to the triangular teeth being hand-made, the calculations used and technology implemented to create the elliptical paths of the planets and retrograde motion of the Moon and Mars, by using a clockwork-type gear train with the addition of a pin-and-slot epicyclic mechanism, predated that of the first known clocks found in antiquity in Medieval Europe, by more than 1000 years.

The device was kept as a family heirloom, and Cicero has Philus (one of the participants in a conversation that Cicero imagined had taken place in a villa belonging to Scipio Aemilianus in the year 129 BC) saying that Gaius Sulpicius Gallus (consul with Marcellus's nephew in 166 BC, and credited by Pliny the Elder as the first Roman to have written a book explaining solar and lunar eclipses) gave both a "learned explanation" and a working demonstration of the device.

But as soon as Gallus had begun to explain, by his sublime science, the composition of this machine, I felt that the Sicilian geometrician must have possessed a genius superior to any thing we usually conceive to belong to our nature.

He added, that the figure of the sphere, which displayed the motions of the Sun and Moon, and the five planets, or wandering stars, could not be represented by the primitive solid globe.

One such device is his odometer, the exact model later used by the Romans to place their mile markers (described by Vitruvius, Heron of Alexandria and in the time of Emperor Commodus).

[94] In the Islamic world, Banū Mūsā's Kitab al-Hiyal, or Book of Ingenious Devices, was commissioned by the Caliph of Baghdad in the early 9th century AD.

The National Geographic documentary series Naked Science dedicated an episode to the Antikythera Mechanism entitled "Star Clock BC" that aired on 20 January 2011.

A functioning Lego reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism was built in 2010 by hobbyist Andy Carol, and featured in a short film produced by Small Mammal in 2011.

[105][106] The YouTube channel Clickspring documents the creation of an Antikythera mechanism replica using the tools, techniques of machining and metallurgy, and materials that would have been available in ancient Greece,[107] along with investigations into the possible technologies of the era.

A major plot point revolves around the fact that the device did not take Continental drift into account as the theory was unknown in Archimedes' time.