Les: "One of the areas that has not been drawn upon, please forgive me if I missed this, is design and technology. [snip] cannot be made without a fair degree of engineering skill and accurate, sophisticated materials, design and technology. This makes [snip] post-industrial revolution."

I am very careful about making generic statements such as these nowadays. Unlike SoreFingers above, I'm not going to rant and rave.

As to "a fair degree of engineering skill and accurate, sophisticated materials, design and technology" - you should look at the "Anticythera device" (spelling?) which has now been reconstructed ... saw it in a Learning/Discovery channel doco, part of a series on ancient gadgets.

My point is that it was believed that it was impossible for the classical Greeks to make such a device (BC). The theory of the device is elaborate, but now out of period for the mathematicans. The pracicalities of construction are not as difficult as you might imagine.

For example a toothed cog wheel with 36 cogs made from brass?

Simple.

Use a protractor to divide the circumference of a circle into whatever number of divisions you wish. The period mathematics exist. Use a file to hand create the teeth, shaped however you want.

Slow. Tedious. Patience.

But the reconstructiom has now been done using only methods and tools known to exist and physically existing in relics and written records.

The device used a large number of cogged wheels to calculate astronomical movements. The world's first known analogue computer.

Much real knowledge was lost when the Library of Alexandria burned.

Robin