111 Years Ago, An Archaeologist Realized He Had Discovered The World's Oldest Known Computer

When it comes to celebrating the history of computers, it’s important to mark all binary anniversaries. In this spirit, we celebrate the 111th anniversary of the discovery of the oldest known computer.

While some people call the Atanasoff-Berry computer the first, and some people point back further to Charles Babbage’s analytical engine, those who know give the crown to the Antikythera Mechanism, which scholars now think was built around 87 B.C.E.

The Antikythera Mechanism was taken out of a sunken ship discovered in 1900 just off the tiny island of Antikythera, just north of Crete in the Mediterranean. After sitting in storage at Greece’s National Museum among other unidentified lumps of bronze, the archeologist Valerios Stais discovered it was, in fact, a mechanical object, on May 17, 1902.

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