This is unbelievably cool! An Apple Software Engineer (big surprise) named Andrew Carol has successfully recreated "the famous Antikythera Mechanism, created by ancient Greeks in 100 B.C. as a way of predicting astronomical events like eclipses" out of LEGO (as documented in a stop-motion film, no less). The interview is very interesting; it's a discussion that would be fruitful even if it was just an intriguing hypothetical in a discussion of machines and the guy hadn't actually gone ahead and done it (Using LEGO!!!) Counting gear teeth, no less...
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662831/watch-an-apple-engineer-recreate-a-2000-year-old-computer-using-legos
