Back in 2006, Jayme wrote about the Antikythera Mechanism, a complex mechanical device built by the ancient Greeks to make astronomical calculations (I had actually blog scooped him the month before, but that was back before I discovered capital letters).

It's taken four years, but they've finally made a lego version of the mechanism.



The way the video takes the time to show you how the gears interact reminds me of the works of Arthur Ganson, the former artist in residence at MIT.


There's a certain perfection in the synchronization of gears that isn't often explored. A friend of mine and I took a half hour of pausing the video for the Arthur Ganson sculpture "Child Watching Ball" until all the gears made sense.

Of course Arthur Ganson had to make every gear by hand, by twisting wires and spot-welding them gear-tooth by gear-tooth. Cheap plastic lego parts open up the ridiculous mechanical sculpture field to just about anyone.