Researchers find hidden Greek text on ‘world’s oldest astronomy computer’: “A team of Greek and British scientists probing the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism has managed to decipher ancient Greek inscriptions unseen for over 2,000 years, members of the project say. ”

Researchers were able to decipher an additional 1,000 characters off of the shoe box sized device. The brass box found near the Southern Greek island of Antikythera - hence the name. The box was found in 1900 after sitting in a shipwreck under the sea for about 2000 years. It is very corroded and so the translation of text and characters as been a slow and difficult task.

A Scientific American article from June of 1959 describes the works and the concepts of the device at that time, which was suspected of being a mechanical calculating device aka a computer even back in the late 50’s.

There are two definite results that will come of this most recent decipherment of the Antikythera Mechanism.

1. Researchers will keep researching the device hoping to prove its computing capability and push the date of the first computer back by more than 1800 years in execution and take away from Davinci the title of first diagram of the device (maybe he saw an old text of this device, which was described by Ancient Greeks of the day.)

2. Neil Stephenson will write another great novel.

I find the first to be intriguing and the second to be fantastic.
Neil if you heard about this story here first, how about an autograph on one of your books? I’ll supply the book, not looking for any freebies.

Additional comments on Digg.com : An ancient Greek Computer

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Coolest-Gadgets.com offered up an article today titled, The ChargeBox - no battery - no problem: “The UK company BoxBrands have come up with a novel solution that will be appearing all over the UK anytime soon, the ChargeBox.”

What is the idea?
Its a locker system (for gadgets;) whereby a user can drop a few coins or bills into a setup that looks like a locker merged with a hotel room vault. Inside the v-locker called a ChargeBox, there are charging adapters that you can plug into your device whether it be an iPod, cell phone or something else.

You plug it in lock it up and come back in an hour or so.

There are similar systems available already in Japan and Holland. This one is coming from a company called BoxBrands Ltd. located in London. BoxBrands is hoping to deploy ChargeBoxes across the UK in Airports, Railstations, Cinemas, Shopping Centers (or Centres) or anywhere that power is available and might be sold!

I suspect that this idea has some feeble legs and will probably take off, not just in the UK but also in the US. People are always ready to pay for something they can get for free (just look at bottled water and canned AIR).

Airlines in the US are always troubled to raise another buck, and this is a great way to turn a very small loss leader, their electric bill, into a revenue or profit center (I’m positive this will work will in Ireland where free air travel is taking off.)

Currently, ChargeBoxes will support the following devices in the UK:

Nokia
Nec E606/616/E313
O2 X2
Panasonic X60/X70
Sagem 918/920/MYX2/MYX5/MYX6
Samsung All Models
Samsung E720
Sharp GX10/GX20
Sharp GX30/GX30i
Siemens A55/S55/C55/SL55
Siemens C25/C35/C45/A35/A50
Sony Ericsson All Models
Sony Ericsson K750i
SPV C500
IPOD
LG U8110/U8120
Motorola A835
Motorola T180/T2288/C350
Motorola V Series
Motorola V3
Blackberry 7230
Sony PSP charger
USB charger/Ipod Shuffle

For more Discussion on this topic, Check out Digg.com’s posting:Chargebox - Machine to charge those Gadgets you use

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