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Antikythera mechanism: The technology behind the world's oldest computer
From Ana Mpa
The Antikythera mechanism, one of the world's oldest known geared devices, is an ancient mechanical calculator, also described as the first known mechanical computer, designed to calculate astronomical positions, that has puzzled and intrigued science and technology historians since its it was recovered from an 80 BC wreck off the island of Antikythera in 1901.
Dated to about 150-100 BC, the intricacy of the way in which the Mechanism works was so startling to scientists that initially they often the device's dating, doubting it could be as old as it really was.
Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not reappear before the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.
A lecture on the Mechanism was recently delivered by Professor Robert Hannah of the Classical Studies Department at New Zealand's Otago University to a packed audience at Sydney University in Australia, who tried to analyze the workings of the Mechanism and, more importantly, to explain how the ancient Greeks were able to create such a complex, precise and sophisticated instrument more than 2,000 years ago, stressing that scientists are still studying and trying to decipher the device.
From Discovery News
A World War II fighter plane was recovered from the depths of Lake Michigan, more than 60 years after it crashed during a training exercise.
Cranes lifted the F6F-3 Hellcat out of 250 feet of water in Waukegan, Ill., about 40 miles north of Chicago, on Tuesday.
The plane had been submerged since Lt. Walter Elcock, the pilot who survived the crash, was practicing landing on the U.S.S. Sable aircraft carrier on Jan. 5, 1945.
As he was coming to the deck, Elcock recalled he brought the plane in too low, lost his lift and crashed into the water, according to an interview with the Daily Mail.
He is now 89 years old and lives in Atlanta. The plane will eventually be displayed at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Florida.
This is the sixth Hellcat fighter plane that the U.S. Navy has pulled out of Lake Michigan. Most recently, the Douglas SBD Dauntless U.S. Navy plane was recovered from the lake in April.
Crowds turn out to see ancient Chinese treasure cargo
From Cri English
More than 2,000 people turned out to the opening of a new museum Wednesday to see silver, copper and porcelain treasures salvaged from a Chinese sailing ship that sank 800 years ago.
About 200 artifacts and the pool containing the still submerged merchant vessel, the Nanhai No.1, were on display at the Marine Silk Road Museum in Yangjiang City, in the southern province of Guangdong.
Curator Zhang Wanxing said many visitors praised the design of the museum, saying it highlighted the theme of maritime culture, but they were disappointed the ship remained unseen and the number of exhibits was small.
The 30-meter-long vessel, which was raised from the seabed two years ago, had been immersed in a sealed glass container in a huge pool at the museum.
The pool -- 64 meters long, 40 meters wide, 23 meters high and about 12 meters in depth -- was filled with sea water and silt to replicate the water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions of the vessel's previous resting place.
Archaeologists said after a trial excavation earlier this year that the wooden structure was perfectly preserved.
The museum authority was considering showing the excavation process to visitors in the future, said Zhang.
"We'll mainly focus on equipment adjustment, staff deployment and security measures during the first opening stage from Dec. 2 to 18.
A detailed management plan is expected to be worked out in the following week before the official opening on Dec. 24," said Zhang.
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Fla. treasure museum preserves pieces of sunken history
By Jeff Meesey - Florida Today
Bill Moore's hammer chips away at the rusty, seashell-encrusted coating of an unidentified pipe-shaped object.
The object could be a valuable artifact from a long-sunken Spanish treasure ship. Or it could be worthless plumbing from a modern-day salvage vessel.
"At this particular point, we really don't know what it is," says Moore, director of operations at Mel Fisher's Treasures museum in Sebastian, Fla.
As Moore removes the shells and other encrustations, he is careful to preserve what is left of the fragile object.
After 20 minutes of cautious hammer work, Moore's practiced eye recognizes an iron pin that was part of an old ship, probably one from a Spanish fleet that sunk off the coast of Florida during a hurricane in 1715.
Treasure from the sunken fleet doesn't always come in the form of gold and silver, he says.
Sometimes, discoveries include pieces of old ships, as well as weapons such as cannons and guns, made up of metals and wood.
Valuable relics found by chance in Delaware River
By Edward Colimore - The Philadelphia Inquirer
As Karl Van Florcke sees it, the discovery of the centuries-old relics in the Delaware River was meant to be.
The captain of the Army Corps of Engineers dredge McFarland was working on the vessel last month when its pumps were turned off for the day - at the precise moment that a piece of the nation's history was vacuumed up with tons of muck and debris.
Less than 24 hours after the crew finished shipping-channel maintenance near Fort Mifflin in South Philadelphia, Van Florcke glanced up at the dredge's nine-foot-wide drag head and spotted something lodged in its grate.
"I was talking to my wife on a cell phone and told her, 'I think that's a cannonball,' " said Van Florcke, of Long Island, N.Y.
He climbed up to retrieve a 24-pound ball and found two other treasures six feet away on the other side of the drag head.
One was the rare tapered iron tip of a cheval-de-frise, the business end of a log once embedded in the river, along with many others, to gore the hulls of British warships that menaced Philadelphia in the mid-1770s.
It had been silently resting a few hundred yards from the fort.
Patience pays for Mel Fisher's treasure-hunting family
By Laura Petrecca - USA Today
In 1622, Spanish galleons loaded with gold, silver, pearls and other treasure sank off Florida's coast after being hit by a hurricane. Around 1969, Mel Fisher began his search for that booty – and in the time since, a multitude of family members have joined the hunt.
For more than 16 years, the Fishers made limited progress. They found artifacts such as gold bars, silver coins and ornate jewelry as they explored miles of underwater turf, but they were often disappointed in their search for the huge treasure that went down with the galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha.
But on July 20, 1985, their patience paid off. Two divers came across the largest bounty yet: silver bars stacked nearly five feet high, 20 by 75 feet long, as well as about 160,000 silver coins.
The estimated value: more than $400 million. A year later, divers found hundreds of emeralds that had been smuggled on the Atocha. As of last month, they were still salvaging treasure from that ship, as well as La Santa Margarita, which also sank in the storm.
While work offers a "fun, romantic adventure with the possibility of hitting it big," Sean, Mel's grandson, stresses it's still a business where persistence is key.
"It gets monotonous and frustrating. We'll go months without finding anything."
Wreck may hold clue to nation's discovery
By Steve Meacham - Smh.com.au
Did American whalers discover the east coast of Australia before Captain Cook ?
That is the intriguing question a crack team of maritime archaeologists, divers and marine scientists hope to answer when they sail tomorrow for a remote reef 450 kilometers off the coast of Queensland.
The expedition leader, Kieran Hosty, describes the 200-year-old mystery of Wreck Reef as one of the great untold sagas of our maritime history.
The story began in 1803, after Matthew Flinders had completed his epic circumnavigation of Australia and was returning to England. He was a passenger on HMS Porpoise, a 10-gun sloop under the command of Lieutenant Robert Fowler.
The ship was traveling in convoy, accompanied by Cato, an armed cargo ship, and Bridgewater, a cargo ship owned by the East India Company.
But disaster struck close to midnight on August 17 when Porpoise hit an uncharted reef in the dark. Fowler ordered a cannon to be fired to warn the other ships.
In the confusion Cato and Bridgewater were heading for a catastrophic collision until Captain Park, on the Cato, changed course, even though that meant hitting the reef about 400 meters from the Porpoise.
Pirate exhibit in Norfolk taps into pirate craze
Growing up on Cape Cod, explorer Barry Clifford was fascinated by the romantic tale of "Black Sam" Bellamy. Sailing to Massachusetts to rendezvous with his mistress, the pirate encountered a nor'easter that sent him, most of his crew, and tons of gold, silver and jewels to the ocean's bottom.
The lore launched Clifford on a life of treasure-hunting — including the discovery in 1984 of the Whydah, Bellamy's treasure-laden three-master, which sank off of Wellfleet, Mass., on April 26, 1717.
"I was looking for treasure, and I found it," Clifford, 64, said. "More treasure than I could have ever imagined. The whole bottom was layered with it."
A sliver of Clifford's discovery is on display through April 4, 2010, at Nauticus, a marine science museum perched on the Norfolk waterfront.
"Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship," organized by National Geographic, includes thousands of gold and silver coins and hundreds of other displays in a 16,000-square-foot interactive exhibition.
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