[speak with bright, conversational energy, drawing the listener in] In the spring of 1901, sponge divers working off the Greek island of Antikythera brought up something nobody could explain.

[say with eager curiosity] This is the shipwreck, right? A cargo ship that went down in the first century BC, loaded with bronze statues and glassware.

[say warmly] That's the one. And among the treasures was a corroded lump of bronze and wood, about the size of a shoebox. [say with a hint of suspense, slowing down] The next year, an archaeologist noticed a gear wheel in it.

[say slowly, in amazed disbelief] A gear wheel. [laugh] Two thousand years old.

Today it survives as eighty-two fragments in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, with at least thirty bronze gears.

[ask with lively curiosity] So what did it actually do?

[explain enthusiastically, with a smile in the voice] You turned a handle, and the dials showed where the sun and the moon were, the phase of the moon, and when the next eclipses would come.

[say excitedly, building momentum] And the moon even sped up and slowed down, the way it really does in the sky. That came from a pin riding in a slot between two gears.

[say with growing wonder] X-ray scans in 2005 revealed thousands of tiny letters engraved on it, a user's guide of sorts. [laugh] There's even a dial for the athletic games, the Olympics among them.

[say thoughtfully, a little slower] And nothing that intricate turns up again for more than a thousand years.

[say warmly, wrapping up with a smile] Which is why it's often called the first analog computer.