Antikythera Ephebe

and many quietly assumed the gear must have fallen into the wreck from some later, more technologically advanced source, since nothing that mechanically sophisticated was believed to exist anywhere in the ancient world.

It didn't help that the device shared museum space with far more immediately impressive finds from the same wreck, including a striking, full-sized bronze statue of a young man now known as the Antikythera Youth, which drew most of the early public attention while the corroded lump of gears sat quietly in a side case waiting for anyone to look closely enough.

It took most of the 20th century and eventually a shift from guesswork to direct imaging to settle the question properly.

In the 1970s, the historian of science Derek de Sola Price used early gamma-ray and X-ray imaging to peer partway into the corroded fragments, and proposed, to considerable skepticism at the time, that the device contained a genuinely complex system of interlocking gears.