From Richard Ellam, Bristol, UK
You report on suggestions that the Antikythera mechanism didn’t function. Over the past 70 years or so, a number of distinguished and skilful historians and museum curators have conclusively established, by making physical replicas of the mechanism, that it did function. Thanks to their work, we now have a pretty good idea of what it was designed to do. All the study in your article establishes, I think, is that computer simulations are a poor substitute for reconstructions using authentic tools and materials(26 April, p 9).
