[No dialogue].
>> Dr. Wahby: 
Here is The Keep, and nobody can
introduce him better than
our Dean of the Library.
>> Dean Lanham: 
Well, in the continuation here
of the Symposium on Ancient
Greece, we are honored to have
with us the Institutional
Repository Librarian here at
Booth Library, who is in charge
of the efforts for The Keep
for Eastern Illinois
University.
Today he is talking with a
different hat, and that is that
of his background
in technology.
We are anxiously awaiting
some comments
and information from
Todd Bruns.
>> Todd Bruns: 
Thank you Dr. Lanham.
[Applause].
Okay, thanks, everyone,
for being here.
I don't know if we are
running on continuous
video or not, so hopefully
they'll understand this
comment, but I don't if
I can really follow up
on aphrodisiacs, but
hopefully you'll find
this presentation
interesting anyway.
I am going to talk about
ancient Greek technology.
This is a wide area, so I am
going to focus on particular
inventions and talk about a
couple of different inventors.
I am going to kind of set the
stage a little bit, again,
I am following up on Kathy's
presentation, which was
fantastic, and so I am going to
start out with a prayer.
The prayer is this: this is from
the Homera Kims; it's a prayer
to the god Hephaestus, that's
the picture over on the right.
Hephaestus was the Greek god of
craftsmanship and technology.
This was a prayer that
craftsmen would say.
It is basically talking about
how technology had, they
felt, the Greeks felt that
technology has lifted them up,
as they say here, "We used
to dwell in caves like wild
beasts, now we've
learned the crafts
from Hephaestus, is
making our life good."
I also want to start
out with sort of
setting the stage here;
I am going to talk
a little bit about how we
think about the ancient
Greeks, and their technology.
When I get in the
who's who, we'll
discuss two or three of the
inventors, and then the
individual inventions I will be
talking about are listed here.
The one at the bottom, analog
computer, is the one I will
focus most on because this is
just an amazing invention.
If we had not discovered it,
people probably would not
believe that they actually
could have done this type of
technology, so it will be very,
I hope, interesting to get
into discussing that.
Through ancient lenses,
here on the left we have
our ancestor, core magnum man,
about 35,000 years ago;
on the right we have
today's modern
man, looking very
contemplative.
I am bringing this up because
when I was taking a course
called Global Technology,
it was taught by a certain
Dr. Wafeek Wahby.
That's where I first met Dr.
Wahby, and we read a very
interesting article by
Jared Diamond
called "The Great
Leap Forward".
Jared Diamond talked about how
35,000 years ago, our larynxes
changed so that we
could have complex
speech and people
started living longer.
Those two things made
a big difference in
terms of all of a sudden we
started doing art, we started
doing technology, we really
did this great leap forward.
This is important thinking about
the ancient Greeks because I
think we tend to think about
previous generations, previous
societies, were not quite as
smart as we are, they
didn't quite have the
technology we did.
Actually, they were.
Thirty-five thousand years
ago, if this man had the
cumulative technology he
could have built the 747.
They were as smart as we
are, what they lacked was
the cumulative technology.
Basically, you can't
build an atomic bomb
until you've had gunpowder.
These people were smart, and
the ancient Greeks were smart.
In fact, they had an industrial
revolution that for them
rivaled our own
industrial revolution.
This picture is from an
arena in Epidaurus,
that sat 14,000 spectators
and you can see that
there's a person standing in
the center of the arena.
If you drop a coin on that
floor, you can hear it all the
way in the back row, that's how
good their acoustics were.
They just, they had fantastic
architecture, they really
went through this great
flowering of technology,
and they refer to
this as 'techni'.
There is going to be an upcoming
presentation by Dr. Hawkins,
he is going to talk about
this in more detail.
Techni means in Greek,
craftsmanship, technology.
They related it to art
because in both cases,
they are creating
something out of nothing.
Techni was a very important
part of ancient Greek society.
So, who's who?
There are three ancient Greeks
I am going to talk about.
Hero of Alexandria; he
lived approximately from
ten to seventy in the
Common Era, a lot
of the inventions I am going to
talk about came from Hero.
He was a professor at the museum
in Alexandria which was the
Library of Alexandria
was part of that.
He built some of his inventions
were based upon previous work
done upon Ctesibius, who lived
about 300 years earlier.
He was probably the first head
of the Museum at Alexandria.
We don't know much about
Ctesibius, in terms of his
personal life; we know a lot
about his inventions.
The one thing we do know is
that he was very poor.
Everyone who wrote about him
talked about how poor he was.
The third person is Archimedes.
Archimedes was a renaissance
man before the Renaissance.
He was a mathematician, an
astronomer, an inventor;
he was all over the place.
He was about the same time
period as Ctesibius, he lived
in the Greek colony of Syracuse,
and he is probably the person
who created the analog
computer that I am going
to talk about later.
Starting out with the different
inventions: This one is the
steam engine.
This was by Hero of
Alexandria, the
first century of the
Common Era.
In terms of complexity, it is
the first use of steam for
power, but the interesting thing
about it is, it wasn't used to
really drive any kind
of practical use it
was used as a temple wonder.
A lot of the inventions
that Hero came up
with were in the temple where
people would come in
and see this thing moving and
think, "Oh my goodness."
Now that was very important to
the Greeks, but we sort of
look at it and say why didn't
you just create a steam
engine out of it, but this
is what it looks like.
In fact, it is so important that
even today, in the US Navy,
you get badges for being a
specialist in certain things.
If you are a specialist in
boiler technology on the
ship, you have a badge that
has a semblance of this,
which is called the eel pile,
so it is very interesting.
Another technology invention
is the first vending machine
came from the ancient Greeks.
This was also Hero of
Alexandria, and the way that
this worked was that this vessel
was filled with holy water.
You dropped the coin up here,
it hit this lever here, the
lever went down, the spigot came
up, and the holy water came out.
As the lever drops, the coin
falls off, this spigot stops,
the holy water stops.
In terms of complexity,
it's so complex that our
own vending machines,
before we had electricity,
used this same kind of set-up.
That's how advanced they were,
and I thought it was interesting
that the reason why
Hero invented this
was because people were
taking too much holy water,
so they had to come up with a
way to say you know if you put
more coins in, that's fine,
you are paying for it.
Alarm clocks is
another invention.
I think we think our
modern day, you
know, we are rush, rush, we
have all kinds of appointments
to be at.
Well, the ancient Greeks did
as well they actually had
alarm clocks.
This one in particular
is what is known as Plato's
alarm clock.
We think this might have been
an invention of Ctesibius.
What is does is it uses air
pressure to move water
from one vessel to the next.
You start out with
your water up here,
there's a little hole at the
bottom of this vessel that
drips at a constant
rate, into this vessel.
Once the water reaches a
certain point, it falls into
this third vessel in a rush,
filling up, pushing the air
out, the air comes
out this little hole
here, which is a whistle,
and that's how your
alarm goes off.
Once you get up and you take
the little plug out of this
vessel, all the water drains
out into the bottom one,
which you use to fill up the
top and that's how that alarm
clock works.
They had other alarm clocks
that had to do with water
and pebbles, where they would
drop pebbles on gongs; this one
is called Clepsydras, which
literally means "water thief".
Showers, you know we think
showers are a really important
part of our daily lives, and
they were for the ancient
Greeks, as well.
This is from a vase, and this
depicts female athletes
that are taking showers
after some games.
Their showers were
so advanced that
they wouldn't have been
out of place in one of
our bathrooms, except for the
fact that the spigots were
shaped like animal heads and the
water came out of the animals'
mouth, but they used lead pipes
to deliver the water; there was
a drain in the floor that then,
also with lead pipes, took the
water away, so again,
very advanced.
This, I couldn't find
who invented this.
There didn't seem
to be anybody that
was listed.
In terms of complexity, again,
it is not unlike our own modern
shower system.
At Pergamum, which is a
Greek city-state in Turkey,
they found a whole
gymnasium full of these,
so these were not uncommon.
I mentioned Pergamum in
particular, because that is
going to come up when I talk
about the analog computer.
This is an automatic
door; this was created
by Hero of Alexandria.
You would light the fire.
You would heat up water that
would move this weight, pull
these pulleys, and the temple
doors would open automatically.
Now this is interesting
in terms of complexity.
It utilizes the physical
principals of pneumatics,
but the question
is: we don't really
know if this was actually
ever produced.
We see drawings of it, but there
has been no archaeological
evidence that they
actually did this.
Now, the analog
computer, the big one.
This is probably from
Archimedes of Syracuse.
In terms of complexity, it
rivals our technology today.
It is that advanced, and
as I get into the story,
I think you'll see why.
It demonstrates an incredible
level of understanding of the
physical universe, and again,
I'll explain how that is.
I am going to start
out telling a story.
It was a dark and
stormy night, and
it literally was a dark and
stormy night, two thousand
years ago.
A very large Roman Galley
Trade ship that was taking
Greek treasure back to Rome,
sank in a storm off the Island
of Antikythera.
Two thousand years later,
in 1901, another storm off
the Island of Antikythera,
stranded some sponge divers.
The sponge divers thought well,
as long as we are stopped here,
we might as well go down and
see what is on the sea floor.
They went and did
some diving, and
they started seeing
like statues.
They started seeing bronze
statues, marble statues,
and they found the
crashed galley.
The galley probably came
from Pergamum, because
they found coins from that
city-state, and roman trade
ships were very, very big.
They could only fit
in certain harbors.
This one at Pergamum
could take a ship like
that, Kos, and Rhodes
down below could
take a ship like that so, most
certainly that is where it was
coming from.
It was heading back towards
Rome and here is where
Antikythera is, just right off
of the southern part of the
Greek peninsula, and that is
where they crashed, and that
is where they found it.
Amongst the pieces was this
corroded bronze piece.
Now when you look at it, you
automatically know this is
something different; you can
see it is machined metal.
You can see that there
are places for spokes
and gears, and
there's this wheel,
and they could make out that
there are some teeth in
the wheel.
They automatically knew this
is something new, but it's
all one piece, and it is all
corroded together, so what
is it and what was it for?
They didn't really know, so
the first investigation
happens in the 1950's
with this English
physicist Derek Price, and he
did radiographs of this piece.
What he determined was there are
at least twenty-seven different
gears in this machine.
He also started counting
the teeth of the gears to
try to figure out
what it was for.
Now for the Greeks,
astronomy is very
much like mathematics,
and they are doing a lot
of counting here.
These two numbers
stood out.
Two of the gear had, one gear
had 235 teeth on it, and another
one had 127.
These are core numbers that
are related to the moon.
Now the way they relate to the
moon is this; the moon goes
around the earth in 27, well
sorry, yes, the moon goes
around the earth in 27 days.
Now you can tell that
because you see where
the moon is in the sky
compared to a star.
When it comes around the sky,
comes back to the same star,
27 days.
The moon goes from a
new moon to another
new moon in 29 days,
so when the Greeks
are counting on their
calendar, they are
thinking ok, a moon
month is 29 days.
Well, as we all know,
that does not add up
to a calendar year.
It is 354 days, versus
365, but it does add
up to 19 calendar years.
That's what the Greeks
called the Metatonic
calendar, and that's where
the two numbers come from,
because 235 moon months
are 19 solar years.
The other number, 127, is
the number 27 days, times 19
years which is 254 divide that
in half and you have 127, then
they used the small gear to move
that, so Dr. Price figured out
these two gears are mapping
where the moon is in the sky.
Okay, so what difference
does that make?
Well, in our modern
day, we see the moon
up in the sky and
we think, "That's pretty."
For the ancient Greeks,
it meant everything.
It determined whether
they went to war,
it determined whether
they had a festival;
it determined something
like if you were going
to travel at night.
You needed to know, is it
going to be a new moon
or a full moon, because I
need that light, so it was
really important to them.
The only thing was, that
he could not figure out
what some of the
other gears were.
There was a very large
gear on the back of the
machine that he
thought has 222,
223 gears, teeth on it.
Dr. Tony Freeth, and this
is around the 2000, 2001,
he led a team to further
investigate this piece
to say what else
does this thing do?
He went through a company in
England called Tech X-Ray;
they do three-dimensional
images, and three-dimensional
x-rays of items.
They created an eight-ton
machine that they had to
take to Greece to
the Museum, because
this piece is too fragile to
move, deliver it there, and run
this piece through
their x-ray machine.
What I have here is rotating
images that they took.
Now as you see this in real
time, it kind of floats
in and out.
It is really ghostly,
but as you can see
as we are going
through, they started
discovering new gears that
were buried in that lump.
They started seeing new
posts that were there.
It really started revealing
a lot more of what was in
this mechanism, and it just, the
level of complexity is amazing.
They couldn't figure
out, okay, we have
all these other gears,
they are counting
all the teeth, and they are
thinking how can we figure out
what this is all about.
They ended up making
a computer model of
all the different gears to try
to figure this out.
This is a picture of the back of
the machine, and look at the
complexity here.
This is a very large gear,
222 to 223 teeth;
this is the front of it.
There is the gear with
127 teeth on it.
They also needed, so they
could see the interior, they
could see all the gears, but
they also needed to see, can
anybody see any
Greek letters here?
It's a little hard to read,
but they saw this little
millimeter type print
all over this machine,
that's been chiseled into
the machine in Greek.
They thought if we can
read this and understand it,
that would give us a better
idea what is going on here.
They went to Hewlett-Packard,
who has a way of looking
at paintings.
They take a big giant dome
that's got flash bulbs on the
inside of it.
This is a picture of the
outside of it, and what
it does is it flashes light from
different angles on and off.
You start being able to see the
paintings that shows you where
the brush strokes are and how
the painting was put together.
They thought, why don't we try
this with this piece and see if
it can reveal the lettering,
and this is what came out.
The letters just jumped out, and
they started being able to read
the Greek, and see what
the instructions were.
What the means were, were
the back gear, the very
large gear, they
saw it said 223.
They knew it had 223
teeth, and they started
thinking okay, so what
is that all about?
A chance discovery
led them to realize
that Babylonians
back, you know, for
hundreds, and hundreds, and
hundreds of years had been
watching the sky and had been
predicting eclipses, and they
kept all these clay records of
when the eclipse would happen.
Actually it was real interesting
what they would do if they knew
an eclipse was coming
up, the king would step
down for the day
of the eclipse,
they would put some poor
guy up in that, you
know, you are temporary king for
a day, at the end of the day,
they would say okay, all the bad
omens from the eclipse they are
all on you now, and
they would kill him.
Then the regular king
would reassume his throne.
In a way, they, yeah,
bad omens, the guy
is going to die,
so it was true.
This is called the Saros cycle.
Two hundred twenty-three
is the Saros cycle.
They started realizing that
what this machine does is
not only monitors
where the moon is
going to be at; it actually
predicts eclipses.
It is a time machine,
in a way, because it
is predicting when
an eclipse is going
to come up, decades
in the future.
It also predicts weather.
This is a Greek letter
sigma for the moon,
Helios for the sun, and this is
Aura, which is shorthand for
Greek for hour.
What this means is it is
predicting eclipses, it
is predicting whether is it
lunar or solar eclipse, it is
predicting the hour, and there
is even lettering on the machine
that indicates what color the
lunar eclipse is going to be,
which is telling whether it
is black, or whether it is
blood red, which is telling
you the direction of the
lunar eclipse.
We start seeing how complex
this machine is, predicting
eclipses, predicting
whether it is solar,
lunar, predicting the color
of the lunar eclipse, and
it gets even more
interesting.
We know, and the
Greeks knew that
the moon's orbit
is elliptical.
It moves faster when it is
closer to the sun, moves
a little bit slower when
it is farther away.
Amazingly, this machine
accounts for that.
This gear has a pin and slot
device that allows for
variable movement,
that accounts for the
movement of the orbit.
Not only does it do that,
and there's a picture of it
sitting on top of the large
gear, it also accounts for the
fact that the elliptical orbit
of the moon rotates around
the earth every nine years.
It accounts for that.
Here are all our prime
numbers that the Greeks
were working with.
Nineteen years, the 127, the 223
gears, 53 gears is related to
this variable movement, and so
they started realizing wow this
thing does all these things, so
it is really an amazing piece
and so they started thinking
about well, who built it?
They looked at the Greek
lettering, and they knew
that Greeks city-states had
particular names for months.
The months that they
saw on the device were
Corinthian, so they
know, okay, this is
coming from a Corinth,
or a colony of Corinth.
They also saw these
are words for Greek
Panhellenic games.
This is Olympia for
the Olympics, Isomia.
Isomia happened in Corinth, and
they saw that it is higher than
Olympia, it's in bigger letters,
that was another clue that this
is Corinthian.
Why did they have the
PanHellenic games on
the device?
It is because the PanHellenic
games happened every
four years, no matter what.
It didn't matter
whether city-states
rose or fell, it didn't matter
if kings died, they had
the games.
That's how you set
the device.
That was the fixed date
that set the device.
This writing here in orange is
talking about the movement
of the planets.
The device actually
also had, it monitored
each of the planets here.
You had the earth in the
center; these are all the
planets moving all
around the device,
this kind of blurry
black ball here was the
phases of the moon.
It was black on one side,
white on the other, so as
it moved around, that moved
and it told you what phase
the moon was in.
Okay so, really complex
machine, where did it
go, why did it disappear for you
know thousands of years and we
just discovered it?
Well, where it went
was east, basically.
The Greek world
collapsed as Italy
was rising as the
Roman power, and
that is what happened at
the time it was taken.
Roman Gallies, big trade ships
were moving through the
Greek world, taking Greek
treasures back to Rome. 	
Eventually Rome collapsed,
and that knowledge tended
to move East to the
Byzantine Empire
first and then eventually
to the Arab world.
That is where this
technology went.
This picture is the
second oldest gear
that has ever been discovered.
This is from 500 in the Common
Era, and it came from Lebanon.
The oldest one is
Antikythera device,
this one is second oldest.
That is a clue that this
technology went east.
Also, we have found
drawings such as this,
from the Arab world.
Again, this is that
gear technology.
Now eventually, gear technology
came back to Europe via Spain,
via the Arabs in the
Fourteenth Century in Europe.
All of a sudden there is this
explosion of gear technology
where people started making
clocks left and right.
It did eventually come back to
Europe, and just bloomed there.
To wrap up, this is a
picture of the device.
It sat in a wooden box,
and it's basically how
the Greeks understood
their world.
It predicted where the moon was
going to be, it depicted the
phases of the moon, solar and
lunar eclipses, the movement of
the planets, it was
really of a piece of
how they understood
the universe.
I wanted to read a quote from
Dr. Price, where he says,
"It's a bit frightening to know
that just before the fall of
their great civilization, the
ancient Greeks had come so
close to our own age, not
only in their thought,
but also in their
scientific technology."
I want to leave
us with my final
thought, with a bit
of serendipity.
If it hadn't been for two
storms, one two thousand
years ago, one in 1901,
this device wouldn't have
been at the bottom
of the sea, and it
wouldn't have been discovered.
If somebody had just
created this and said
to us, I think the ancient
Greeks did this; we probably
never would have
believed it.
It is amazing serendipity
that that happened, and
we discovered it and
it tells us something
about what the ancient Greeks
were capable of doing.
I want to thank you for
your time, and I hope you
found this informative,
and thanks very much.
>> Dr. Wahby: 
Thank you.
[Audience Applause].
Any questions?
Any questions?
I have a question regarding it's
one of a kind to be found.
They didn't find any
replicas or more than one?
>> Todd: 
They haven't found them
but there are
stories about them.
In Syracuse, the Romans
sacked the city, they
sacked Syracuse, and
General Marcellus
gave the order, "Do
not kill Archimedes."
We want him, he's
brilliant, don't kill him.
They way the story
goes was a Roman
soldier told this old man who,
this old man was drawing circles
in the sand, and told him, you
need to get over here with the
other captains.
The old man said no, and he ran
him through with the sword and
that was Archimedes.
Marcellus took back two
boxes very similar to this
to his home and Cicero
writes later about visiting
General Marcellus's
grandson in his
home, and seeing
boxes like this.
There's, in the literature,
there's descriptions of
it, but this is the only
one we have in evidence.
>> Dr. Wahby:
If we find something
that is embedded, not
in water, to be rusted
and so forth, maybe it will be
in better shape to understand,
so let's hope archeology
would do something?
>> Todd: Yes.
>> Dr. Wahby: 
Any other questions?
I have another
question for Todd
regarding the heliocentric
or geocentric.
Does this tell us anything
about the beliefs of that?
Because I read one article
about how ancient Greeks
believed in a heliocentric
and for some reason this
knowledge was lost, and
then discovered by
Copernicus and others.
>> Todd:
What they could see
[audio scramble] to
the lunar eclipses,
I am sorry, well the
lunar eclipses.
When they could see
the earth's shadow
moving across the
moon, they could see
it was round and they started
putting together okay; we live
on a round planet.
Then they started realizing
the rotation of what was
happening with the planets.
It's quite likely that they
might have thought that
it was heliocentric, although
if you look at some of their,
if you look at this device
actually, this does still
kind of put earth at the
center, and everything
is going around it, so they
might have been right on
the cusp of that.
>> Dr. Wahby:
Can we attribute this to the
fact that sometimes even today,
in the 21st century, we'll say
that the sun is rising and
setting, while we know that
that is not the truth, we just
for everyday use, we say it is
rising, but it is not.
>> Todd:
Yes.
>> Dr. Wahby: 
Could it be that?
>> Todd:
Yeah, I think absolutely.
Yes.
>> Dr. Wahby:
 Any other questions?
Otherwise we
will give him a
round of applause.
>> Todd: 
Thank you.
[Audience Applause].
[No dialogue].
