Revisiting the Antikythera Mechanism Emulator

Over the past few weeks I updated the Antikythera mechanism emulator I built in 2007. I was preparing for an invited talk on the subject, which I'll give at the 2009 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, and for this I wanted to include in the emulator the new findings recently published in Nature.

This update includes the following changes.

• Incorporation of the Olympiad dial and gears n3 and o1.
• An update of the Sun and Moon eclipse labels according to the newest findings of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.
• The introduction of gear ma1 for the calculation of the Moon phase.
• The phase of the Moon display on the front dial.
• The renaming of gear o1 to q1 and q1 to ma1 to keep the software's internal structure in sync with the Nature article's nomenclature.

I had barely touched the software and the Etoys environment for almost two years. Despite this, I quickly found myself at home. Implementing the changes proved remarkably straightforward; a tribute to the versatility of the Etoys environment. I also tested the software under Version 3.0 of Etoys, and, despite my fears, it worked fine.

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