Book description
In 1900 a group of sponge divers blown off course in the
Mediterranean discovered an Ancient Greek shipwreck dating from around
70 BC.
Lying unnoticed for months amongst their hard-won haul was what
appeared to be a formless lump of corroded rock, which turned out to
be the most stunning scientific artefact we have from antiquity. For
more than a century this 'Antikythera mechanism' puzzled academics,
but now, more than 2000 years after the device was lost at sea,
scientists have pieced together its intricate workings.
In Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant tells for the first time
the story of the 100-year quest to understand this ancient computer.
Along the way she unearths a diverse cast of remarkable characters -
ranging from Archimedes to Jacques Cousteau - and explores the deep
roots of modern technology not only in Ancient Greece, the Islamic
world and medieval Europe.
Jo Marchant is Opinion Editor at
New Scientist
magazine. She has a PhD in medical microbiology and has been a science
journalist for nine years. She spent three years of that as an editor at
the journal
Nature
, and her articles have also appeared in the
Guardian
and
The Economist
. She lives with her boyfriend in Brixton, London.
