The Antikythera Mechanism

Is said to be an ancient mechanical computer, designed to calculate astronomical positions. It is a one of its kind until at least a 1400 years later. Has anyone here heard of it?
 
Yes. The device was pulled up by Greek fishermen in 1900 at the site of a Classical era shipwreck. It apparently was originally housed in a wooden box and driven by a crank and gear mechanism, probably looking rather like an 18th century clock. X-ray analysis of the internals of the mechanism show it to be an astronomical computer. details of the settings at the time of its loss indicate a last use was in the year 82 BC. It apparently used the Egyptian calendar, and was probably built in Alexandria.
 
There is actually some evidence to suggest that the water clock in the Tower of the Winds in Athens also used Clockwork, while the tradition of the Antikythera mechanism's gears and cogs can be traced through Byzantine clocks, Islamic astrolabes and possibly a massive Chinese Clock-Pagoda before reemerging in Europe.
 
According to reports The Antikythera Mechanism was privately owned and kept a secret. Made by a brilliant engineer for a non-technical consumer. If this mechanism was available and made public to scholars would it have greatly advanced technology and how so?
 
Some feel this would have solved many of the technical issues they were having in the 15th century.
 
I recall reading somewhere that there was a manuscript in Constantinople (the manuscript characterised itself as a copy fom the Library of Alexandria) and reportedly stolen in the crusades and resurfaced in modern era somewhere in the West when Mechanism of Antikythera gained fame...
Scholars who examined it referred to it as the "instruction manual" for this mechanism...
I dont know if this is true or not... personally i havent seen or read this manuscript... But if its true then it proves that this mechanism was designed by some Hellenistic engineer in Alexandria for use by someone amateur who didnt had the knowledge to operate it...
It is important to say that ccordind to professor Michael Edmonds of Cardiff University this mechanism could calculate leap years even when the world didnt knew something like that at least for a century (mechanism was supposedly constructed about 150 BC and leap years were introduced by Julius Caesar and his calendar in 46 BC)
The mechanism had to be rotated one scale backwards every 4 years in order to avoid mistakes in calculations...
 
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