Who built the first known computer, and when?
Over 2,000 years before Alan Turing.
The answer
The Antikythera mechanism, discovered in a 1901 shipwreck off Greece, dates to approximately 100 BCE. This bronze device used 30+ meshing gears to predict astronomical positions, eclipses, and even Olympic Games dates. It is considered the world's first known analog computer, and nothing of comparable complexity appeared again for over a millennium.
Source: Nature journal
- ancient technology
- Greece
- computing
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