By examining the structure of the gears, the numbers of teeth, how they interact with each other, and the inscriptions, the AMRP confirmed that the device was an incredibly detailed astronomical calendar that could predict eclipses, calculate the dates of the Olympics, the positions of the sun, moon and planets in the solar system and more. There is nothing else like it known from antiquity, and no other mechanical device would even come close to its complexity until the Middle Ages. “It was not a research tool, something that an astronomer would use to do computations, or even an astrologer to do prognostications, but something that you would use to teach about the cosmos and our place in the cosmos. It’s like a textbook of astronomy as it was understood then, which connected the movements of the sky and the planets with the lives of the ancient Greeks and their environment.” It is pure luck that we fished this thing out of the Mediterranean in 1901. The alternative possibility is that antiquity had many more such exotic devices. We don’t have a very good idea of what antiquity was like.

2022-09-18: Reflections on the mechanism

WHETHER OR NOT sphaerae technology survived until the Renaissance remains unclear. I am inclined to follow Price, who believed it did, but a case can also be made for loss and reinvention. The technology might have been suppressed for religious reasons in later Roman days—certainly its suppression would only have been hastened if the sphaerae were associated with astrology. All that is known is that the technology persisted in Europe until at least 500 CE, and elements seem to have been reintroduced later through the Arabic world.
It is clear that Renaissance scholars knew the Greeks had made mechanical astronomical displays. This is attested, for example, by Giovanni de Dondi, who constructed an elaborate astronomical clock in approximately 1364 CE by Kepler in his letters around 1605 CE and in the writings of Conrad Dasypodius, who designed the Strasbourg astronomical clock around 1571–74 CE.
Given that the Greeks could build the Antikythera mechanism, a common question is what other devices they might have created. Some aspects of the technology can be seen in surviving medical instruments, including small-bore tubes and worm gears. Although the Greeks had elementary lathes, files, and bronze-casting ability, the limited accuracy achieved in the manufacture of gears may explain why there is no evidence of calculators for financial or surveying use. Another deterrent to calculators being designed may have been the ready availability of labor skilled in the abacus and other basic counting devices.
It was the lack of escapement technology that prevented the development of clocks, although some wheelwork was apparently used in clepsydrae. The use of large and crude wooden lantern gears continued in mills and other applications, but further development of practical mechanisms using small metal gears seems to have stalled. In explaining the lack of a classical industrial revolution and the emergence of precision manufacturing technology, many other considerations also come into play, in particular the abundance of slave and other labor, as well as the nature of pre-gunpowder military weapons.