Remember that old commercial about "Zack, the Lego maniac"? Well, Zack ain't got nothing on Andrew Carol. When Carol's not working on improving the finer points of OS X as a software engineer at Apple, he's hard at work building analog computers -- like the Babbage difference engine -- entirely out of Legos.
Recently, Carol has completed his biggest challenge yet: a working Lego replica of the famous Antikythera Mechanism, created by ancient Greeks in 100 B.C. as a way of predicting astronomical events like eclipses. Though pictures of Carol's device have surfaced before, few people have delved into how it functions. Working with Digital Science, I directed a short film about the device using stop-motion animation to explain how it works -- and talked to Andy about his design process.
The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego from Small Mammal on Vimeo.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Watch an Apple Engineer Recreate a 2,000-Year-Old Computer Using Legos | Co.Design
Author: John Pavlus
