Imaging the Antikythera Mechanism March 10, 2010

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Google Tech Talk
March 5, 2010

ABSTRACT

Presented by Tom Malzbender.

The Antikythera Mechanism is an astronomical mechanical computer built by the ancient Greeks in 200 B.C.E. and resides in the National Archeological Museum in Athens. In 2005, Dan Gelb and I travelled to Athens to apply our Reflectance Transformation methods to the device in the hopes of uncovering faint writing on its surface. The trip - part of an international collaboration described in the Dec. 2009 issue of Scientific American - was a success and subsequent epigraphers have been able to decipher enough new writing to allow researchers to understand what the device was and how it operated. I will give an overview of both our imaging method and the Antikythera Mechanism itself.

Tom Malzbender is a senior research scientist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. Tom works at the intersection of computer graphics, computer vision and signal processing and has developed the techniques of Reflectance Transformation, Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) and Fourier Volume Rendering. He also developed the capacitive sensing technology that allowed HP to penetrate the consumer graphics tablet market. His PTM methods are used by the National Gallery in London, the Tate Gallery and in the fields of criminal forensics, paleontology and archeology. Tom is on the program committees for several 3D graphics and vision conferences. More information can be found at http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Tom_Malzbender/ .