The Handheld Universe of 60 BCE 🏺

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]The Antikythera mechanism was housed in a wooden case roughly the size of a large shoe box.

[00:00:06]The front face had a main dial showing the positions of celestial bodies.

[00:00:11]The back face had two spiral dials for tracking 19-year and 18-year astronomical cycles.

[00:00:18]On the side, a hand crank.

[00:00:21]One turn of the crank equaled one day.

[00:00:25]37 gears doing the mathematics inside.

[00:00:28]What happened when you turned it and what the pointers on the front dial actually showed, the full story is linked below.