It was found in a ship that had sunk in the first century BC in the Aegean Sea.
It has very complicated gears including what appear to be differential gears and is thought to have been used to calculate astronomical positions and etc.
Thus its use on a ship to determine where the ship was would make sense.
We had read about this previously in the book "The Puzzle of Ancient Man" by Donald E. Chittick. The Antikythera Mechanism was described in Chapter One as an OOPA (out of place artifacts).
OOPA, according to Chittick, "are not an anomaly. Instead they attest to a high and technologically advanced civilization in the ancient past."
A friend of DIT found today's link to an article in the Washington Post that tells about this amazing find.
HERE'S THE LINK to the the Antikythera Mechanism
