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Re:Antikythera Mechanism by empath75 on Saturday July 27, 2019 @06:35PM (#20544679)
It seems like only a handful of people ever made them and it probably didn’t even last for very long after Archimedes died. It was essentially an extraordinarily expensive toy.
Re:Antikythera Mechanism by xenadu02 on Saturday July 27, 2019 @06:48PM (#20544732)
Because the design and engineering greatly outstripped the extant methods of manufacturing the devices didn’t actually work that well.

It would take another 1000 years of slow incremental improvements in manufacturing to be able to make one of these devices accurate enough to be useful.

If you want to make civilization resistant to collapse and increase its ability to recover quickly: bury gear cutters, lathes, magnifying glasses, precision tools, etc. The most difficult part will be bootstrapping the ability to build accurate tools with which to rebuild an industrial society.

Re:Antikythera Mechanism by Rebelgecko on Sunday July 28, 2019 @01:30AM (#20546013)
One of the things most interesting to me about the mechanism is that it devotes a lot of gears and hardware to making small corrections which get completely overwhelmed by the inaccuracy of the manufacturing.
Re:Antikythera Mechanism by pasabagi on Sunday July 28, 2019 @05:02AM (#20546543)
It's actually possible to build a working machine lathe out of the parts of an ordinary car engine. If you really wanted to make society collapse resistant, including a manual about how to do so, a couple of tungsten carbide bits, and a couple of hacksaw blades with every car would probably do the trick. I think everything else you need (welding equipment, drills, etc) would be fairly straightforward to cobble together.
Re:Antikythera Mechanism by DoreenMichele on Saturday July 27, 2019 @06:39PM (#20544693)
It was essentially an extraordinarily expensive toy.

So not unlike early cars.

By 1900, at least 100 different brands of horseless carriages were being marketed in the United States. Since they were all virtually handmade, the cars were outrageously expensive. Cars were perceived as no more than a high-priced toy for the rich. The early 1900s cars were, to many, a despicable symbol of arrogance and power.

https://www.anythingaboutcars.com/early-1900s-cars.html

Re:Antikythera Mechanism by sgt101 on Saturday July 27, 2019 @06:45PM (#20544711)
There's good evidence that this kind of thing was made in the Arab world in the "dark ages" and that many of the moving statues in western europe were powered from the same sort of mechanisms in the medeival period. Great listen here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bk1c4d