The Oldest Known Photographs of Rome (1841–1871)

in History, Photography | August 9th, 2023

The rav­ages of COVID-19 have been fol­lowed by the rav­ages of the post-pan­dem­ic tourism boom. If you’ve been read­ing recent cov­er­age of aggres­sive trav­el and its dis­con­tents, you may well assume that it’s too late to have a gen­uine expe­ri­ence of, say, the great cities of Europe. Paris, Vien­na, Barcelona: none are as they used to be, we’re told, and the same may even be true of the Eter­nal City. Lovers of such places were com­plain­ing about tourists decades and decades ago, of course, but how far back in time would one have to trav­el in order to take in the glo­ries of a Rome that had­n’t yet fall­en to the invad­ing T‑shirt-and-flip-flopped hordes?

One would have to trav­el back about 150 years, at least accord­ing to the pic­to­r­i­al evi­dence pro­vid­ed in the video above from Youtu­ber Jarid Boost­ers, who appears to have a strong inter­est in his­tor­i­cal pho­tog­ra­phy.

His most pop­u­lar videos include gath­er­ings-up of pic­tures of old Los Ange­les, of the lost archi­tec­ture of the Ger­man Empire, of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Iran. In this new episode, he presents the ear­li­est known pho­tographs tak­en in Rome, which date from the ear­ly eigh­teen-for­ties to the ear­ly eigh­teen-sev­en­ties. Most were tak­en by an ear­ly Ital­ian adopter of pho­tog­ra­phy named Gioacchi­no Alto­bel­li.

Soon after pick­ing up a cam­era in the eigh­teen-thir­ties, Alto­bel­li ded­i­cat­ed his career to “pho­tograph­ing some of the most ancient and most infa­mous sites through­out Rome,” says Boost­ers. “From 1841 through 1871, Alto­bel­li, along with a team of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers, includ­ing Richard Jones, took it upon them­selves to doc­u­ment the most famous and ancient city of Rome as com­plete­ly as pos­si­ble.” Their sub­jects includ­ed the still-rec­og­niz­able likes of the Colos­se­um and Hadri­an’s tomb, nat­u­ral­ly, as well as the Arch of Drusus, the Tem­ple of Venus and Roma, and the Por­to di Ripet­ta. Hav­ing been demol­ished by the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the Por­to di Ripet­ta stands out as one of the fea­tures that sets the Rome of Alto­bel­li’s day apart from the Rome of today — well, that and the absence of self­ie-tak­ers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rome Comes to Life in Pho­tochrom Col­or Pho­tos Tak­en in 1890: The Colos­se­um, Tre­vi Foun­tain & More

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The First Masterpieces to Depict Regular People: An Introduction to the Reformation Painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

in Art, History, Life | August 8th, 2023

The skat­ing scene that opens A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is such an evoca­tive, arche­typ­i­cal win­ter vision, it’s like­ly to stir nos­tal­gia even in those whose child­hoods did­n’t involve glid­ing across frozen ponds.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder cre­at­ed a sim­i­lar scene in the 16th-cen­tu­ry. His changed the course of West­ern art.

Pri­or to his 1558 Ice Skat­ing before the Gate of Saint George, Antwerp, West­ern artists most­ly stuck to VIP por­traits, and reli­gious and mytho­log­i­cal sub­jects.

As the Nerd­writer, Evan Puschak, explains above, the rare excep­tions to these themes were intend­ed to rein­force some moral instruc­tion, often via buf­foon­ish depic­tions of reg­u­lar peo­ple behav­ing bad­ly.

The cou­ple in Quentin Mat­sys’ The Mon­ey Chang­er and His Wife are far less grotesque than the cen­tral fig­ure of his satir­i­cal por­trait, The Ugly Duchess, but the sym­bol­ism and the wife’s keen focus on the coins her hus­band is count­ing point to a sort of spir­i­tu­al ugli­ness, name­ly a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with mate­r­i­al wealth.

Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Loose Com­pa­ny and Pieter Aertsen’s The Egg Dance are both set in broth­els, where debauch­ery is in ample evi­dence.

Bruegel paint­ed some works in this vein too. The Fight Between Car­ni­val and Lent pits pious church­go­ers against a plump butch­er rid­ing a bar­rel, a guy with a pot on his head, and many more rev­el­ers act­ing the fool.

His skat­ing scene, by con­trast, pass­es no judge­ments. It’s just an obser­va­tion of ordi­nary cit­i­zens amus­ing them­selves out­doors dur­ing the ‘Lit­tle Ice Age’ that gripped West­ern Europe in the mid 16th cen­tu­ry.

Adults bind run­ner-like blades to their feet with laces…

A small child uses poles to pro­pel him­self on a sled made from the mandible of a cow or horse…

A back­ground fig­ure plays with a hock­ey stick…

Less gift­ed skaters cut ungain­ly fig­ures as they attempt to remain upright. (Pity the poor woman sprawled in the mid­dle, whose skirts have flipped up to expose her bare heinie…)

Bruegel’s human­ist por­tray­al of a crowd engaged in a rec­og­niz­able, pop­ulist activ­i­ty proved wild­ly pop­u­lar with the grow­ing mer­chant class. They might not have been able to afford an orig­i­nal paint­ing, but prints of the engrav­ing, pub­lished by the won­der­ful­ly named Hierony­mus Cock, were well with­in their reach.

The every­day sub­ject mat­ter that so cap­ti­vat­ed them was made pos­si­ble in part by the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, which came to a head with the Icon­o­clas­tic Fury, eight years after “Peas­ant” Bruegel’s dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed image appeared.

The image wins the approval of mod­ern skat­ing buffs too.

Amer­i­can field hock­ey pio­neer Con­stance M.K. Apple­bee includ­ed it in her 20s era mag­a­zine, The Sports­woman. So did sports­writer Arthur R. Good­fel­low in 1972’s Won­der­ful world of skates: Sev­en­teen cen­turies of skat­ing which prompt­ed fig­ure skat­ing his­to­ri­an Ryan Stevens to quote a trans­lat­ed Old Flem­ish inscrip­tion on his blog:

Skat­ing on ice out­side the walls of Antwerp,

Some slide hith­er, oth­ers hence, all have onlook­ers every­where;

One trips, anoth­er falls, some stand upright and chat.

This pic­ture also tells one how we skate through our lives,

And glide along our paths; one like a fool, anoth­er like a wise;

On this per­ish­able earth, brit­tler than ice.

Explore anoth­er of Pieter Bruegel’s teem­ing depic­tions of ordi­nary life with the Khan Academy/Smart History’s  break­down of 1567’s Peas­ant Wed­ding, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Stay At Home Muse­um: Your Pri­vate, Guid­ed Tours of Rubens, Bruegel & Oth­er Flem­ish Mas­ters

What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

A Brief Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Mar­tin Luther’s 95 The­ses & the Reformation–Which Changed Europe and Lat­er the World

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Novelist Michael Chabon Digitally Re-Creates the Science Fiction & Fantasy Section of His Favorite 1970s Bookstore

in Books, History, Sci Fi | August 4th, 2023

Michael Chabon was born in 1963, which placed him well to be influ­enced by the unpre­dictable, indis­crim­i­nate, and often lurid cul­tur­al cross-cur­rents of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. He seemed to have received much of that influ­ence at Page One, the local book­store in his home­town of Colum­bia, Mary­land — and it was to Page One that his imag­i­na­tion drift­ed dur­ing the long days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic spent in his per­son­al library. “As I sat around com­muning with my tat­tered old friends,” he writes, “I dis­cov­ered that I retained a sharp rec­ol­lec­tion — title, author, cov­er design — of what felt like every sin­gle book that had ever appeared on those tall shelves along the left wall of Page One, toward the back, between 1972 and 1980.”

That was the store’s “Sci­ence Fic­tion & Fan­ta­sy” sec­tion, which in that peri­od was well-stocked with titles by such stars of those gen­res as Ray Brad­bury, Ursu­la K. LeGuin, Arthur C. Clarke, J. G. Bal­lard, C. J. Cher­ryh, Michael Moor­cock, and Philip K. Dick.

Or at least it did if Chabon’s dig­i­tal re-cre­ation “The Shelves of Time” is any­thing to go by. Down­load­able here in “small” (96 MB), “large” (283 MB) and “very large” (950 MB) for­mats, the lav­ish image func­tions as what Chabon calls a “time tele­scope,” offer­ing “a look back at the visu­als that embod­ied and accom­pa­nied my ear­ly aspi­ra­tions as a writer, and at the mass-mar­ket splen­dor of paper­back sf and fan­ta­sy in those days.”

“I’m the same age as Chabon, and I was also a book­store rat, star­ing at these exact same cov­ers and ago­niz­ing over which one I’d lay down my $1.25 for,” writes Ruben Bolling at Boing Boing. “Just look at those beau­ti­ful John Carter of Mars cov­ers. I col­lect­ed and cher­ished these, and the Tarzan series.” Bolling also high­lights the adap­ta­tions Chabon includes on these re-imag­ined shelves: there’s “the James Blish Star Trek series, just as I remem­ber it,” and also the nov­el­iza­tion of Star Wars, which he read before the open­ing of the film itself.  “So instead of expe­ri­enc­ing the movie as it should have been — as campy movie fun — I expe­ri­enced it as an adap­ta­tion of a lit­er­ary work.”

Despite being a cou­ple of decades younger, I, too, remem­ber these cov­ers vivid­ly. My own sci-fi-and-fan­ta­sy peri­od occurred in the late nineties, by which time these very same mass-mar­ket paper­backs from the sev­en­ties were turn­ing up in quan­ti­ty at used book­stores. For me, few images from these gen­res of that era could trig­ger read­ing mem­o­ries as rich as those Bal­lan­tine cov­ers of The Sheep Look Up, The Shock­wave Rid­er, and Stand on Zanz­ibar by John Brun­ner, a British spe­cial­ist in social and envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe. Like many read­ers, I put this sort of thing aside after a few years, but Chabon has proven infi­nite­ly more ded­i­cat­ed: half a cen­tu­ry after his days haunt­ing Page One, his mis­sion to “drag the decay­ing corpse of genre fic­tion out of the shal­low grave where writ­ers of seri­ous lit­er­a­ture aban­doned it,” as crit­ic Ruth Franklin once described it, con­tin­ues apace.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Nov­el­ist Michael Chabon Sang in a Punk Band Dur­ing the ’80s: New­ly Released Audio Gives Proof

600+ Cov­ers of Philip K. Dick Nov­els from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

The Dune Ency­clo­pe­dia: The Con­tro­ver­sial, Defin­i­tive Guide to the World of Frank Herbert’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece (1984)

The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay: Ani­ma­tion Con­cepts

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Oppenheimer: The Decision to Drop the Bomb, a 1965 Documentary Featuring J. Robert Oppenheimer

in Film, History | August 4th, 2023

If you’ve seen Christo­pher Nolan’s new Oppen­heimer film, you may want to turn your atten­tion to anoth­er film, the 1965 doc­u­men­tary called Oppen­heimer: The Deci­sion to Drop the Bomb. With it, you can hear direct­ly from J. Robert Oppen­heimer and oth­er archi­tects of the first atom­ic bomb. Released on NBC News’ offi­cial YouTube chan­nel, the film cap­tures their reflec­tions two decades after the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. It also fea­tures a coda by pres­i­den­tial his­to­ri­an Michael Beschloss. As one YouTube com­menter put it, “This is some­thing every­one should see. I was total­ly engrossed and cap­ti­vat­ed. His­to­ry brought to life by the very peo­ple that were involved. Thank you NBC archives.” You can watch it above…

Oppen­heimer: The Deci­sion to Drop the Bomb will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion: 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Pakistani Musicians Play a Wonderful Version of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Classic, “Take Five”

in Animation, History | August 1st, 2023

How’s this for fusion? Here we have The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra, based in Lahore, Pak­istan, play­ing an inno­v­a­tive cov­er of “Take Five,” the jazz stan­dard writ­ten by Paul Desmond and per­formed by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet in 1959. (Watch them per­form it here.) Before he died in 2012, Brubeck called it the “most inter­est­ing” ver­sion he had ever heard. Once you watch the per­for­mance above, you’ll know why.

Accord­ing to The Guardian, The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra was cre­at­ed by Izzat Majeed, a phil­an­thropist based in Lon­don. When Pak­istan fell under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Gen­er­al Zia-ul-Haq dur­ing the 1980s, Pakistan’s clas­si­cal music scene fell on hard times. Many musi­cians were forced into pro­fes­sions they had nev­er imag­ined — sell­ing clothes, elec­tri­cal parts, veg­eta­bles, etc. What­ev­er was nec­es­sary to get by. Today, many of these musi­cians have come togeth­er in a 60-per­son orches­tra that plays in a state-of-the-art stu­dio, designed part­ly by Abbey Road sound engi­neers.

You can pur­chase their album, Sachal Jazz: Inter­pre­ta­tions of Jazz Stan­dards & Bossa Nova, on Ama­zon. It includes ver­sions of “Take Five” and “The Girl from Ipane­ma.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site over a decade ago. For obvi­ous rea­sons, we’re bring­ing it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music

Watch an Incred­i­ble Per­for­mance of “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet (1964)

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

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Behold A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design: The 19th Century Book That Introduced Western Audiences to Japanese Art (1880)

in Architecture, Art, Design, History, Travel | July 31st, 2023

In 1880, archi­tect Thomas W. Cut­ler endeav­ored to intro­duce his fel­low Brits to Japan­ese art and design, a sub­ject that remained nov­el for many West­ern­ers of the time, giv­en how recent­ly the Toku­gawa shogu­nate had “kept them­selves aloof from all for­eign inter­course, and their coun­try jeal­ous­ly closed against strangers.”

Hav­ing writ­ten pos­i­tive­ly of China’s influ­ence on Japan­ese artists, Cut­ler hoped that access to West­ern art would not prove a cor­rupt­ing fac­tor:

The fear that a bas­tard art of a very debased kind may arise in Japan, is not with­out foundation…The Euro­pean artist, who will study the dec­o­ra­tive art of Japan care­ful­ly and rev­er­ent­ly, will not be in any haste to dis­turb, still less to uproot, the thought and feel­ing from which it has sprung; it is per­haps the ripest and rich­est fruit of a tree cul­ti­vat­ed for many ages with the utmost solic­i­tude and skill, under con­di­tions of soci­ety pecu­liar­ly favor­able to its growth.

Hav­ing nev­er vis­it­ed Japan him­self, Cut­ler relied on pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished works, as well as numer­ous friends who were able to fur­nish him with “reli­able infor­ma­tion upon many sub­jects,” giv­en their “long res­i­dence in the coun­try.”

Accord­ing­ly, expect a bit of bias in A Gram­mar of Japan­ese Orna­ment and Design (1880).

That said, Cut­ler emerges as a robust admir­er of Japan’s paint­ing, lac­quer­ware, ceram­ics, cal­lig­ra­phy, tex­tiles, met­al­work, enam­el­work and net­suke carv­ings, the lat­ter of which are “are often mar­velous in their humor, detail, and even dig­ni­ty.”

Only Japan’s wood­en archi­tec­ture, which he con­fi­dent­ly pooh poohed as lit­tle more than “artis­tic car­pen­try, dec­o­ra­tion, and gar­den­ing”, clev­er­ly designed to with­stand earth­quakes, get shown less respect.

Cutler’s ren­der­ings of Japan­ese design motifs, under­tak­en in his free time, are the last­ing lega­cy of his book, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those on the prowl for copy­right-free graph­ics.

 

Cut­ler observed that the “most char­ac­ter­is­tic” ele­ment of Japan­ese dec­o­ra­tion was its close ties to the nat­ur­al world, adding that unlike West­ern design­ers, a Japan­ese artist “would throw his design a lit­tle out of the cen­ter, and clev­er­ly bal­ance the com­po­si­tion by a but­ter­fly, a leaf, or even a spot of col­or.”

The below plant stud­ies are drawn from the work  of the great ukiyo‑e mas­ter Hoku­sai, a “man of the peo­ple” who ush­ered in a peri­od of “vital­i­ty and fresh­ness” in Japan­ese art.

A sam­pler of curved lines made with sin­gle brush strokes can be used to cre­ate clouds or the intri­cate scroll­work that inspired West­ern artists and design­ers of the Aes­thet­ic Move­ment.

While Cut­ler might not have thought much of Japan­ese archi­tec­ture, it’s worth not­ing that his book shows up in the foot­notes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Art and Archi­tec­ture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Take a peek at some Japan­ese-inspired wall­pa­per of Cut­ler’s own design, then explore A Gram­mar of Japan­ese Orna­ment and Design by Thomas W. Cut­ler here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Explore the Beau­ti­ful Pages of the 1902 Japan­ese Design Mag­a­zine Shin-Bijut­sukai: Euro­pean Mod­ernism Meets Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Design

Down­load Clas­sic Japan­ese Wave and Rip­ple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japan­ese Artists from 1903

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Oppenheimer’s Secret City: The Story Behind the Stealthy Creation of Los Alamos, New Mexico

in History, Physics | July 27th, 2023

We think of the atom­ic bomb as a destroy­er of cities, name­ly Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. But its devel­op­ment also pro­duced a city: Los Alam­os, New Mex­i­co, an offi­cial­ly non-exis­tent com­mu­ni­ty in which the nec­es­sary research could be con­duct­ed in secret. More recent­ly, it became a major shoot­ing loca­tion for Oppen­heimer, Christo­pher Nolan’s new movie about the tit­u­lar the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist remem­bered as the father (or one of the fathers) of the atom­ic bomb based on his work as the direc­tor of the Los Alam­os Lab­o­ra­to­ry. You can learn more about that lab­o­ra­to­ry, and the town of 6,000 con­struct­ed to sup­port it, in the new Vox video above.

Los Alam­os was nec­es­sary to the Man­hat­tan Project, as the R&D of the world’s first nuclear weapon was code-named, but it was­n’t suf­fi­cient: oth­er secret sites involved includ­ed “a nuclear reac­tor under a Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go foot­ball field”; “the Alaba­ma Ordi­nance Works, for pro­duc­ing heavy water”; “a large plant for the enrich­ment of ura­ni­um and pro­duc­tion of some plu­to­ni­um” in Oak Ridge, Ten­nessee”; and the Han­ford Engi­neer Works in Wash­ing­ton State, which pro­duced even more plu­to­ni­um.

But the bomb itself was cre­at­ed in Los Alam­os, into whose iso­la­tion Oppen­heimer recruit­ed the likes of Enri­co Fer­mi, Edward Teller, Richard Feyn­man, and oth­er pow­er­ful sci­en­tif­ic minds — who brought their wives and chil­dren along.

As a 1944 Med­ical Corp memo warned, the “intel­lec­tu­als” at Los Alam­os would “seek more med­ical care than the aver­age per­son”; at the same time, one-fifth of the mar­ried women there were preg­nant, so up went mater­ni­ty wards as well. The pop­u­la­tion of Los Alam­os grew so rapid­ly that “hut­ments were a com­mon form of accom­mo­da­tion,” though “apart­ment build­ings were also avail­able.” The hous­ing sat along­side “facil­i­ties for graphite fab­ri­ca­tion, and the cyclotron and Van de Graaff machines.” Less than 250 miles south lay what, in the sum­mer of 1945, would become the site of the Trin­i­ty test. It was there, gaz­ing upon the explo­sion of the unprece­dent­ed nuclear weapon whose devel­op­ment he’d over­seen, that Oppen­heimer saw not mere­ly a destroy­er of cities, but a destroy­er of worlds.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Oppen­heimer: The Man Behind the Bomb

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How, Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion, He Recit­ed a Line from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds”

See Every Nuclear Explo­sion in His­to­ry: 2153 Blasts from 1945–2015

Learn How Richard Feyn­man Cracked the Safes with Atom­ic Secrets at Los Alam­os

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How the Ancient Greeks Invented the First Computer: An Introduction to the Antikythera Mechanism (Circa 87 BC)

in History, Technology | July 26th, 2023

At the cen­ter of Indi­ana Jones and the Dial of Des­tiny is a device quite like the real ancient Greek arti­fact known as the Antikythera mech­a­nism, which has been called the world’s old­est com­put­er. “Every Indi­ana Jones adven­ture needs an exot­ic MacGuf­fin,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Meilan Sol­ly, and in this lat­est and pre­sum­ably last install­ment in its series, “the hero chas­es after the Archimedes Dial, a fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of the Antikythera mech­a­nism that pre­dicts the loca­tion of nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring fis­sures in time.” After under­go­ing Indi­ana Jone­si­fi­ca­tion, in oth­er words, the Antikythera mech­a­nism becomes a time machine, a func­tion pre­sum­ably not includ­ed in even the least respon­si­ble archae­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tions about its still-unclear set of func­tions.

But accord­ing to Jo Marchant, author of Decod­ing the Heav­ens: Solv­ing the Mys­tery of the World’s First Com­put­er, the Antikythera mech­a­nism real­ly is “a time machine in a sense. When you turn the han­dle on the side, you are mov­ing back­ward in time, you’re con­trol­ling time. You’re see­ing the uni­verse either being fast-for­ward­ed or reversed, and you’re choos­ing the speed and can set it to any moment in his­to­ry that you want.”

She refers to the fact that a han­dle on the side of the mech­a­nism con­trols gears with­in it, which engage to com­pute and dis­play “the posi­tions of celes­tial bod­ies, the date, the tim­ing of ath­let­ic games. There’s a cal­en­dar, there’s an eclipse pre­dic­tion dial, and there are inscrip­tions giv­ing you infor­ma­tion about what the stars are doing.”

It seems that the Antikythera mech­a­nism could tell you “every­thing you need to know about the state and work­ings of the cos­mos,” at least if you’re an ancient Greek. But it also tells us some­thing impor­tant about the ancient Greeks them­selves: specif­i­cal­ly, that they’d devel­oped much more sophis­ti­cat­ed mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing than we’d known before the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when the device was dis­cov­ered in a ship­wreck. Accord­ing to the BBC video above on the details of the Antikythera mech­a­nis­m’s known capa­bil­i­ties, Arthur C. Clarke thought that “if the ancient Greeks had under­stood the capa­bil­i­ties of the tech­nol­o­gy, then they would have reached the moon with­in 300 years.” A grand old civ­i­liza­tion that turns out to have been on a course for out­er space: now there’s a viable premise for the next big archi­tec­tur­al adven­ture film fran­chise.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch an Accu­rate Recon­struc­tion of the World’s Old­est Com­put­er, the 2,200 Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism, from Start to Fin­ish

How the World’s Old­est Com­put­er Worked: Recon­struct­ing the 2,200-Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism

Researchers Devel­op a Dig­i­tal Mod­el of the 2,200-Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism, “the World’s First Com­put­er”

How the Ancient Greeks Shaped Mod­ern Math­e­mat­ics: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Mod­ern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vas­es & Arti­sanal Glass

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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