Ancient Art and Architecture/Alamy
I had no idea, when I went to see , that the eponymous artefact would turn out to be the Antikythera mechanism (pictured above), the most wondrous creation of the ancient world. The device is mind-blowing: a calculating machine, sometimes called the world’s first computer, that was made in the 1st century BC. Nothing like it would be built for another 1000 years.
When I reviewed Jo Marchant’s riveting account of the discovery of the mechanism, I said it was like an Indiana Jones adventure – and it seems that writer Jez Butterworth…
