For over a century since the Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in an ancient shipwreck, its exact function was a tantalizing puzzle.
From a few words deciphered on the twisted, corroded fragments of bronze gears and plates, experts guessed it was an astronomical instrument.
After more than a decade, a team of scientists has read about 3,500 characters of explanatory text — a quarter of the original — on the 2,100-year-old remains.
They say it was a kind of philosopher's guide to the galaxy. “It was not a research tool, something that an astronomer would use to do computations,” said Alexander Jones, a historian at New York University. “It’s like a textbook of astronomy as it was understood then.” — A.P.