After examining closely the surviving wonder of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the unique piece not only anticipated solar eclipses but also arranged the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, ancestor of the nowadays Olympic Games.

As reported Wednesday in the journal “Nature”, the new ascertainments also indicated that the idea for the mechanism developed in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, on Sicily. The experts said this suggests a possible association with Archimedes.

Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., is famous, among other things, for inventing a planetarium that predicted motions of the Moon and the known planets and for writing a missing manuscript on astronomical devices. Some proof had earlier connected the sophisticated instrument of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study upon deviations in the Moon’s orbital course.

The first analog computer, as the Antikythera Mechanism is called sometimes, was found more than a century ago — in 1901 — in the wreckage of a Roman ship that sank off the small island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Previous research revealed that the mechanism was apparently built between 140 and 100 B.C.

Only now, having at disposal high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts succeeded to interpret inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the device. The latest examination has uncovered particularities of dials on the instrument’s backside. They include the names of all 12 months of an archaic calendar. Decrypting the artifact has taken many years and advanced with the help of imaging technology provided by Hewlett-Packard Labs. IN 2006, the company joined the project putting to use its patented reflectance imaging. The HP men took photos of the Antikythera Mechanism from a fixed point and from 50 distinct light sources disposed over the object. When the images were put together, they generated a clearer picture of the writing on the device.

The team headed by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, in Cardiff, Wales, said in the journal report that the month names “are unexpectedly of Corinthian origin,” which pointed to “a heritage going back to Archimedes.”

According to the researchers’ notes, no month names on what so-called Metonic calendar were known before. A calendar like this, as well as other data displayed on the device, demostrated the influence of Babylonian astronomy on the Greeks. Babylonians used the calendar from at least the early fifth century B.C.

Dr. Freeth‘s explanations show that the Metonic calendar was created to harmonize the lengths of the lunar month with the solar year. Twelve lunar months are about 11 days short of a year, but 235 lunar months are exactly 19 years.

“From this it is possible to construct an artificial mathematical calendar that keeps in synchronization with both the sun and the moon,” Dr. Freeth said, as quoted by The New York Times.

The writings also revealed that one of the instrument’s dials had the role of recording the timing of the pan-Hellenic games, a four-year cycle. Researchers said this cycle was “a common framework for chronology” by the Greeks.