Archimedes Ancient Planetarium Gearwheel Unearthed?

a reply to: Byrd

Thats why I myself question it.

The only thing I could find was this video which shows it a few times.

Hows your Italian?

originally posted by: SLAYER69

Hows your Italian?

Will a mastery of Italian be required to read the English subtitles ?

a reply to: Marduk

Thats cheating, open a bottle of wine instead, relax and enjoy the vibe.

originally posted by: SLAYER69
a reply to: Marduk

Thats cheating, open a bottle of wine instead, relax and enjoy the vibe.

Actually, my Babylonian improves with wine, but my Italian sucks in any case

a reply to: Marduk

Don't try drink olive oil for it, trust me. Bad idea.

originally posted by: SLAYER69
a reply to: Byrd

Thats why I myself question it.

The only thing I could find was this video which shows it a few times.

Hows your Italian?

Nonexistent, but my Spanish is rudimentary... enough to "sort of" understand. It doesn't allow me to translate but it does allow me to check printed translation and spoken word.

This is a case (as they used to say) of "taking a button and sewing a vest on it." He takes a part of a single gear (which could have been attached to anything) and constructs the legendary planetarium. He assigns functions to the cog shape, but a closer look at it makes me wonder if it was shaped that way or if it was worn. The claim of hyper advanced mathematics isn't supported.

I dunno. I would like to see the context - what else was dug up with it. The whole thing's just too sketchy to satisfy me.

But I'm picky.

I wouldn't DISbelieve it, necessarily, but I'm not satisfied with what I see.

a reply to: Byrd
Hey there bryd,
I think it's a big leap to start reconstructing a planetarium from a sector of a fairly small gear.

Gear design is one of the hardest clases in a Mechanical Engineering program.
I have experience making gears, and a little design experience as well, fabricating custom gears for customers
The object does appear to an involute tooth profile, which by the way you get a close approximation of from extreme wear between square toothed gears.

a reply to: punkinworks10

I think it's more likely that the gear is part of a less spectacular mechanism, there is a well known tradition of clocks and other sorts things, like distance measuring machines that are more likely.

I can't find any trace of this gear wheel at all outside of the claims made in this book, which was apparently released in 2006.
The Author claims

As can be noted from the many published articles, the extraordinary findings seen in the mathematical study of the profile of the teeth were immediately released in print, online and in other national and international scientific conferences. The extraordinary and certain incontrovertible scientific evidence that the construction of the piece assumed was made public immediately and exclusively

I can't find a single trace predating this book and my google fu is very advanced
So I'm calling shenanigans...

a reply to: Marduk

Yes, we mustn't forget the impact of "Geniuses" on their societies and local maxima of tech. I'm sure there have been hundreds of cultures in the past who were blessed with geniuses that greatly increased their technology level while they were alive - and which all quickly disappears within a generation or so of their death - and the greater the genius, probably the quicker the decline as fewer would even be able to comprehend.

Greeks from that era knew their geometry and advanced math, so making gears isn't beyond them. They didn't quite have the Arabic (Hindu?) numbering system, but their way of transcribing numbers was more compact than Roman numerals and they developed the underpinnings of trigonometry. When you had philosophers among them that got veryclose in figuring out the Earth's diameter and often using ratios to figure out things, then making mechanical computers would be an extension of those ideas. You also had stuff like the Cult of Pythagoras and other groups that were into numerology, so things mathematical and technical were significant pursuits among the Greeks when compared to other civilizations in antiquity.

They had both bronze and iron working, with stuff like Hero's engine - the real surprise is they never quite put that together (as far as anyone is aware of) to start the industrial age. However they did have stuff like mechanisms for temple doors, devices that counted tithings, simple weather machines, and construction engines that were rather advanced given what they had to work with.

I also wouldn't be too surprised if some of the stuff that started with clock making during the Renaissance was stuff recovered from lost documents. (And people of that era were big on trade secrets, so those parchments are probably long gone by now.) Maybe not the exact mechanisms they made, but the rudimentary processes for making the parts and the math and geometry behind them were definitely of use.