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More than a hundred years ago an extraordinary mechanism was found by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea near the island of Antikythera. It astonished the whole international community of experts on the ancient world. Was it an astrolabe? Was in an orrery or an astronomical clock? Or something else? For decades, scientific investigation failed to yield much light and relied more on imagination than the facts. However research over the last half century has begun to reveal its secrets. It dates from around the 1st century B.C. and is the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world. Nothing as complex is known for the next thousand years. The Antikythera Mechanism is now understood to be dedicated to astronomical phenomena and operates as a complex mechanical "computer" which tracks the cycles of the Solar System.

http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/

Great link, thanks. In the link section you can find a next link to a small software - a simulation of Antikythera mechanism. Direct link (safe):

http://download.lavadomefive.com/member ... hanism.zip

It's amazing to watch this mechanism in action.

Here is a very good article about that mechanism in Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 4534a.html

Unfortunately, all the program does on my system is display a fancy title screen and use 100% of the cpu. No model is shown and none of the keyboard and mouse commands do anything.

It doesn't look like a masterpiece of programming, but works quite well on my work computer and on my laptop. Idk how to help you...

Unfortunately, all the program does on my system is display a fancy title screen and use 100% of the cpu

I found other 2D animation with JAVA

http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/whatsnew/column/antikytheraI-0400/kyth5.html