Sponge divers find the Antikythera wreck

In 1900 Greek sponge divers sheltering from a storm off the island of Antikythera found a Roman-era shipwreck at a depth of about 60 metres. Among the statues, pottery and coins recovered was a corroded lump of bronze which in 1902 the archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed contained a gear wheel. The Antikythera mechanism, made around the second or first century BC, is an astonishingly complex hand-cranked device with at least 30 gears that predicted eclipses and the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets, and the dates of the Olympic Games. Nothing of comparable complexity is known for another thousand years.

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