App: Antikythera Mechanism Interact
Developer: Markos Skoulatos
Genres: Bildung

*Get the world’s most impressive ancient technology in your palm*

Available in English, Greek, German, French, Italian, Spanish.

Get introduced and fascinated by the world’s most ancient technology, the Antikythera Mechanism! Familiarize yourself with the zodiac constellations, planetary motions and solar system. The unique finding of Antikythera Mechanism is now at your hands. It enables you to orient yourself in the night sky, and make various predictions about the moon, eclipses, planetary motions and even Olympic and other ancient games. The ancient egyptian and greek Metonic calendars are included, as in the original device. The app enables real time predictions, as well as navigation in the past and future.

*Discovery*

The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered back in 1900, by sponge divers off the coast of the island of Antikythera. The geared device was designed to make calculations, and being so complex, it took 100 years to unlock its secrets. It is exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

*App features*

    • Simulation and use of the Antikythera Mechanism, tuned to our modern calendar
    • Intuitive use
    • Predicts moon position and phase
    • Predicts solar and lunar eclipses
    • Predicts positions of the five naked-eye planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
    • Extensive graphical help menu, explaining details of all the features to the more curious users
    • After making your own eclipse predictions, the app enables to check against the NASA eclipse website
    • Planetary motions are described in terms of ancient epicyclic theories, modeled by gear calculations in the app
    • Database of the moon and planetary positions from 1920 to 2120. This can be used to cross check the accuracy of the gears, in real time as you operate the device within the app.

*Ancient technology*

The mind-blowing concepts spread all over the Antikythera Mechanism weren’t spotted in any civilisation for at least one and a half millennia to come. All this know-how seems to have vanished in between. The Antikythera Mechanism constitutes a clever educational gadget, that we admire over time. The app aspires to raise your interest and perhaps enable the younger generation to learn, by exploiting technology with an ancient twist.

Release notes:
Fixed display of actual positions, and the links to the eclipse website now work properly.