# Example: Antikythera Mechanism

**Status:** Draft
**Phase:** The Bedrock Phase

## What This Example Demonstrates

Thread integrity failure (OE-0001). The cost of lost context (OE-0003).

## The Observation

The Antikythera mechanism, built circa 100-200 BCE, contained over 30 gears and could predict astronomical positions and eclipses. The engineering knowledge required to design and build it was lost. Comparable complexity in geared mechanisms did not reappear for over a millennium.

**Sources:** Freeth, T. et al. (2021). "A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism." *Scientific Reports*, 11, 5823. de Solla Price, D. (1974). "Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism — A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B.C." *Transactions of the American Philosophical Society*, 64(7).

## Engineering Translation

When the thread breaks — when the reasoning, constraints, and verification behind an engineering artifact are no longer accessible — the accumulated understanding is lost. Recovery requires re-derivation from first principles, which is costly, slow, and may produce different (not necessarily better) results.

## Context Record Gap

The Antikythera mechanism is a case where no context record was preserved (or none has survived). What remains is the artifact itself, not the reasoning that produced it. Modern analysis can reverse-engineer function, but the engineering context — why these specific gear ratios, why this arrangement, what alternatives were considered — is largely irrecoverable.

## Self-Fading Assessment

This example transports the reader from the abstract concept of "thread integrity" to a concrete historical case where thread failure had measurable consequences. Once the reader understands that lost context equals lost engineering time, the example has served its purpose.