On 10/3/2011 1:01 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>>> But, at that time,
>>>> such things where nearly impossible to replicate, so when the ship it
>>>> was one sank...
>>>
>>> We're talking about something from a /long/ time ago. The fact that no
>>> others have been found yet doesn't mean none existed.
>>>
>> This is true, but from a purely practical standpoint, the expense,
>> precision, and engineering needed to get just "one" to work, using
>> basically copper and bronze gears, and little if any fast and replicable
>> casting methods (where talking hand making each gear here), the odds of
>> an exact copy is pretty much nil. The odds of something similar, still
>> close to zero. Something much simpler.. possibly, but its basically a
>> clock, more or less, and I am pretty sure that water clocks where just
>> about as close as they ever got, based on everything known/found/written
>> about, other than this thing, to that level of precision.
>
> That's interesting, because Wikipedia claims there's a long documented
> history of ideas similar to this one, starting with Archimedes...
>
Not always evidence they where actually built though. And, again, its a 
matter of "size" and "complexity". Heck, even Babbage ran into the issue 
of, "I think this will work, but there is no way in hell I could ever 
build this thing."

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