Jo Marchant the author of Decoding the Heavens explores the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism and the long search of many to find the truth about it. The Antikythera mechanism is a device found in the 1900 in a shipwreck. Jo does a great job taking us through the time before the device was found, as well as during the time the Antikythera mechanism was found and its significant to society. We get to learn about what different scholars and scientist thought the device was for. There were many different theories people came up with about the purpose of the Antikythera mechanism. Something fascinating about Decoding the Heavens is it portrays so well the obsession for this mechanism. Jo gives us a background on sponge divers so we familiarize ourselves with the occupation. She describes them, as the hero’s of the time since diving was a dangerous job. People saw them as heroes because every time they left home to do their job there was a good chance they wouldn’t return. It was a group of divers under the command of Captain Konos who discovered a shipwreck in Antikythera. For a few years no one really paid attention to it, till finally they decided to send out a group of divers to retrieve artifacts from the shipwreck. We get a really detailed play by play of what happened while retrieving…show more content… She gives some background on who found it. It turns out the Antikythera was left in the storage room of the museum after the collection of all the artifacts in the shipwreck. The description of the Antikythera mechanism is very detailed, yet still doesn’t give readers an exact image. The book gives several descriptions of the device in the words of different scholars who tried to describe it in previous writings. From this point on is where the reader starts learning why the Antikythera is so important, the history of where it came from, and what it was used