From Swiss Army knives to iPhones, it seems we just love fancy gadgets with as many different functions as possible. And judging from the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism, the desire to impress with the latest multipurpose must-have item goes back at least 2000 years.

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According to New Scientist, this is the first working model of the Antikythera computer to include all of the device's known features. And, like the original machine, it has been built of recycled metal plates.

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A new working model of the mysterious 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers.

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MARCELLUS and his men blockaded Syracuse, in Sicily, for two years. The Roman general expected to conquer the Greek city state easily, but the ingenious siege towers and catapults designed by Archimedes helped to keep his troops at bay.

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A 2,100-year-old "computer" found in a Roman shipwreck may have acted as a calendar for the Olympic Games, scientists report in Nature journal. The Antikythera Mechanism has puzzled experts since its discovery by Greek sponge divers in 1901.

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An ancient Greek astronomical calculator that showed the positions of the sun, Earth and the moon, and outshined any known device for 1,000 years after it, also kept track of something more mundane: when the next Olympics would take place.

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After a closer examination of the Antikythera Mechanism, a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olymp …

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Number one in the hit parade is "The Grooved Spheres" -- Over the last few decades, miners in South Africa have been digging up mysterious metal spheres.

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A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

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Crypto-History, Instalment 5: Ooparts, Archaeo-Astronomy and Ancient Technology

The Hidden Threads of Crypto-History A Multi-Part Exploration of Alternative Theories of the Human Experience Instalment 5: Ooparts, Archaeo-Astronomy and Ancient Maps(click here for the previous instalment.) (click here to go to the beginning.)

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A podcast explaining the history of the Antikythera Mechanism, a piece of technological history that was (literally) hundreds of years before its time. Some relatively recent news was released, but not really put into context -- this podcast episode attempts to correct that.

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Scientists Mystified by 2,100-Year-Old Device. The island of Antikythera lies 18 miles north of Crete, where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. Currents there can make shipping treacherous -- and one ship bound for ancient Rome never made it.

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The information age could have happened 2,000 years ago but didn't. What we need to learn from the past -- and correct -- to keep from plunging into another Dark Ages.

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The information age could have happened 2,000 years ago but didn't. What we need to learn from the past -- and correct -- to keep from plunging into another Dark Ages.

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A 2,100-year-old clockwork machine whose remains were retrieved from a shipwreck more than a century ago has turned out to be the celestial super-computer of the ancient world.

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AN ancient astronomical calculator made at the end of the 2nd century BC was amazingly accurate and more complex than any instrument for the next 1000 years, scientists said today.

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2,000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism: "It multiplies, divides and subtracts, but you can't program it." Results of a high-tech research project to be released next week promise to finally unravel much of the remaining mystery of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator.

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