In 1900, off the Greek island of Antikythera. a sponge diver found the wreck of an ancient ship loaded with statues, amphorae, and other objects dating from the first century BC. It yielded not only a rich hoard of art treasures but an odd looking instrument. The bronze instrument, encrusted with calcareous deposits, lay ignored.
As it gradually dried, the ancient wood casing and internal parts cracked and split into four flat fragments, the inner sides of which revealed parts of geared wheels together with some barely legible Greek inscriptions. As cleaning exposed more gears and inscriptions, scholars hypothesized that the device was probably a navigational tool, an astrolabe, used to determine the altitude of the sun.
There speculation about the device stood until 1951, when Professor Derek de Solla Price of Yale University began what would become a definitive study of the Antikythera Mechanism, as it had come to be called. Attempting to re-create the device, Price and his Greek co-workers used x-rays and gamma-rays to probe the internal structure. The mechanism, he discovered, contained layer upon layer of variously sized gears. After long calculations of possible gear ratios, Price arrived at an astonishing conclusion: Some ancient Greek inventor had designed a mechanism that mimicked the actual movements of the sun, moon, and planets, past, present, and future. In 2008, scientists reported new findings that the mechanism also predicted solar and lunar eclipses and calculated the timing of the Ancient Olympic Games. The Antikythera Mechanism is a 2,000-year-old ANALOG COMPUTER.
In the development of a new neighborhood in West Houston, excavations resulted in the discovery of a second Antikythera type device find shown below. The device might be Roman in origin as evidenced by faint Latin inscriptions and Roman numerals.
MRI imaging indicated at least 38 interconnected gears. Scientists and cartographers deduced the device was probably some type of a computer that was used to determine global positions, the forerunner of the modern GPS. Even stranger was the fact that faint orthogonal markings on the device indicated precisely where the device was located. If you like, you can interpret the markings and visit the site where the device was found.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.