Is it really accurate to call the Mechanism a “computer”? Yes, but in a slightly different way than we’re used to using that word. It’s an analog computer, which means it can’t execute programs. But the word “computer” used to be the name given to people who could do tedious math. In the 19th century there were rooms of people called “computers” who were skilled at arithmetic, supervised by a mathematician, who would create tables at great expense that navigators and sailors would use. But when we finally had mechanical devices that could do similar things, they got that name: computer. But analog computers were still very useful up through the 1940s. World War II battleships would have a mechanical computer in their artillery, so that when you wanted to fire, you’d turn cranks to figure out how many times is this gun to be fired, how far is the other ship, what’s the wind velocity, that sort of thing. And when you turned all the cranks, the gear ratios would tell you how to adjust your aim. So the Antikythera Mechanism, and my Lego version, are both just simple mechanical computers: you turn the crank at one speed and all the wheels move at a another speed, which you’ve calibrated to have a particular meaning – in this case, predicting the cycles of astronomical bodies. (via Watch an Apple Engineer Recreate a 2,000-Year-Old Computer Using Legos | Co.Design)