The size of a shoebox, a mysterious bronze device scooped out of a Roman-era shipwreck at the dawn of the 20th century has baffled scientists for years.
Now researchers have stunningly established it as the world's oldest surviving astronomy computer.
A team of Greek and British scientists probing the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism has managed to decipher ancient Greek inscriptions unseen for over 2 000 years, members of the project say.
"Part of the text on the machine, over 1 000 characters, had already been deciphered, but we have succeeded in doubling this total," says physician Yiannis Bitsakis, member of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from universities in Athens, Salonika and Cardiff, the Athens National Archaeological Museum and the Hewlett-Packard company.
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'It was probably rare' "We have now deciphered 95 percent of the text," he says.
Scooped out of a Roman shipwreck located in 1900 by sponge divers near the southern Greek island of Antikythera, and kept at the Athens National Archaeological Museum, the mechanism contains over 30 bronze wheels and dials and is covered in astronomical inscriptions.
Probably operated by crank, it survives in three main pieces and some smaller fragments.
"(The device) could calculate the position of certain stars, at least the Sun and Moon, and perhaps predict astronomical phenomena," says astro-physicist Xenophon Moussas of Athens University.
"It was probably rare, if not unique," he says.
'It is a puzzle' The rarity of the Antikythera Mechanism precluded its removal from the museum, so an eight-ton "body scanner" had to be assembled on-site for the privately-funded project, which used three-dimensional tomography to expose the unseen inscriptions.
The first appraisal of the mechanism's purpose was put forward in the 1960s by British science historian Derek Price, but the scientists' latest discovery raises more questions.
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