I've always thought this was remarkable

Ancient Greek Computer Had Surprising Sun Tracker

The world’s oldest astronomical calculator is famous for having intricate gear systems centuries ahead of their time. But new work shows the Antikythera mechanism used pure geometry, as well as flashy gears to track celestial bodies’ motion through the heavens.

The device, a 2,000-year-old assemblage of gears and wheels that matched 19th century clocks in precision and complexity, was salvaged from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901.

Called the Antikythera mechanism, the machine gracefully kept track of the day of the year, the positions of the sun and the moon, and perhaps the other planets. It also predicted eclipses and kept track of upcoming Olympic games.

Now, due to some new research, it turns out it uses precise geometry to allow for irregularities in apparent speed of the Sun's transit across the heavens due to Earth's elliptical orbit.

Greek ingenuity about 18 centuries too early

The Greek engineer who invented the steam engine 2,000 years ago

Hero, or Heron, of Alexandria, on the other hand, had the astonishing bad taste to be born around 10 CE, which made his inventions so far ahead of their time that they could be of little practical use and, in time, were forgotten. If he had been born in, say, 1710, his engineering prowess and incredible creativity might have made him the richest person in the world. As it is, he'll just have to settle for the posthumous reputation of being the greatest inventor in human history. Seriously, unless you invent a warp drive tomorrow, there's no way you're catching up to Hero.

I used to have a really fun book called Ancient Inventions, mentioned at the bottom of the article. It was full of amazing stuff. Unfortunately, I lent it to a classmate in grad school and he kept it. I should look into replacing my copy. And you know, I learned a lot about ancient and mediaeval science from one of my professors at school who specialised in that (he also taught a great class on mediaeval cosmology), but a lot of those sorts of inventions never made it into class. (I take a certain amount of pride in having survived three of his classes--he assigned insane numbers of readings and was a very difficult person to get along with, but I somehow made it. But I was terrified of having him on my committee, and that was one reason I never managed to finish my graduate degree in ancient and mediaeval history, due to anxiety over an oral defence.)

File under ingenious ancient inventions

2,100-year-old gadget tracked Olympics

Researchers have found that in addition to calculating astronomical data, the Antikythera Mechanism--which looks much like a clock with gears inside, also kept track of the timing of the Olympics, which is significant in that there is no real need to do complex calculations for a simple four-year cycle; it was a societal, not heavenly, event, but incorporated into the device. It also tracked eclipses and the Metonic calendar. Also, the month names used on the device are similar to those used by Corinthian colonies in Sicily, giving some idea as to its origin.

PS Speaking of eclipses, I didn't mention the total solar eclipse that happened on the 1st because it didn't affect us here in Kentucky (damn the bad luck; I've only seen partial eclipses of the sun and would love to see a total one). It would really have been remarkable in the Arctic, where it was centred, since they've got the midnight sun thing going on right now. Here's a video of the totality, by http://www.astroscopio.com, an astronomy website: