MORE ON THE BRASS BALL

I hadn’t planned another post on this topic, but this is too good to pass up.

New Scientist has an updated report today in its Short Sharp Science  blog about the Brass Ball which I discussed in an earlier post. It seems the latest discovery pushes back the creation of the particular sample of the device in time. Among its tricks and inscriptions is the calculation of the timing of various olympic festivals, including one that was no longer practiced after the second century BCE. The full story even has an animation of the internal workings of the gearing, though I haven’t tried loading it yet on my own ancient machine.

Clearly, if these things had spread widely enough to be luxury goods in a “small market” Greek colony, they were not confined to the laboratory of a single genius, as the original New Scientist report had indicated.