JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Was the Antikythera mechanism—fragments of an ancient mechanical device that were found in 1900 after two thousand years in the Aegean Sea—the world’s first computer? John Seabrook in The New Yorker: “Until this moment, I had, like many others, continued to puzzle over why, if the Greeks were capable of building such a technically sophisticated device, they used that capacity to construct what is essentially a toy—an intellectual amusement. But as I beheld this whirring, whirling symphony of metal, a perfect simulation of a mechanistic and logical universe, I realized that my notions of practicality were foolish and shortsighted. This machine was much more than a toy; it embodied a whole world view, and it must have been, for the ancients, wonderfully reassuring to behold.”