In 2006, this fragment was found off the coast of Olbia by the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage for the Province of Sassari and Nuoro.
But because this fragment is likely to open a case so blatantly threatening to open a new view on the scientific thought of antiquity?
Dr. Rubens Doriano under whose direction the excavation took place, assured that the construction of the building dates from the late 3rd century BC, just when Hellenism was at its peak.
By this date, therefore, is the most ancient history of the gear. This is a fragment of a bronze gear wheel 43 mm in diameter with 55 teeth originally entire circle.
Given the small size of the find from the start it was considered to be part with a system very similar to that found in the waters of the island of Antikythera, but dates back to the first century BC.
Because of the abundant presence of oxide on the surface, the teeth appeared just sketched, and the signs that they had a triangular profile as those of the astronomical calculations of Antikythera, National Archaeological Museum of Athens, or the Byzantine astrolabe Built eight centuries after the Antikythera calculator and stored at the London Science Museum.
But to the astonishment of the restoration has emerged that the profile of gear teeth is triangular, like that of the mechanisms implemented in the following centuries, but curved, so that seem remarkably similar to that of modern gear teeth.
Perfection, gear, games without excessive interference, can be reached in modern gears whose wedge-shaped profile is the result of careful and deep mathematical studies made in modern times.
triangular teeth of gears such as the Antikythera Calculator Byzantine astrolabe and, instead, allow the meshing of course, but are roughly the excessive play between the teeth
From a careful study of the computer was reconstructed profile of the ring gear of the finding that the measurements was almost identical to the profile of the gears modern, while the differences are very pronounced size gears with triangular profile. The finding of Olbia
also has a broken tooth fracture starting at the half height, irrefutable proof that the gear was part of a mechanism that worked.
Far from saying that nature is an artifact of the Greek finding it indicates an extraordinary precision construction, although it is done manually with very little "technology" at the time about the lack of special equipment, machine tools and measuring instruments, indispensable for a correct metalworkers.
Although small, the finding Olbia is of great archaeological and scientific value, and it is very important test of the greatness of Hellenistic scientific thought, which confirms what many think, but you can not prove easy for the absence of findings, and especially of texts.
* * * Many other such devices have been produced and are gone, perhaps forever, lost because they were not properly understood by professionals, most often interested in statues or more immediate and meaningful grip on public.
fact, if a group of sponge divers had not stumbled across the wreck of the ship about a century ago, two thousand years after the sinking of the Calculator Antikythera, the same would still be under the sea to disintegrate for corrosion, and if, once rescued, the mechanism had not "found" an archaeologist who, among other things was also a physicist, De Solla Price, would be yet forgotten in a closet in the museum in Athens. So even if a prudent and experienced archaeologist, as Rubens D'Oriano, had not given the proper value to a battered and seemingly insignificant piece of bronze, we could not know what this study has revealed.
full study was presented at the XVIII International Congress of studies on "Roman Africa", organized by the University of Sassari was held in Olbia 11 14 December 2008.
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