Did the ancients have mechanical watches?

Antikythera mechanism

Antikythera is a Greek island about 40 km from Crete. In 1900, divers discovered the remains of an old ship near Antikythera.

In the ship there were marble and ceramic objects from the first century BC. They also discovered a bronze object in the shipwreck that had been eaten away by time. This object was finally forgotten for years in a museum storeroom.

In 1955, a scientist decided to clean the old bronze object. When the scab was removed, the object turned out to be an instrument of some kind. It had a series of gears that fitted perfectly into each other. The device is thought to be an astronomical clock, but the way it worked is unknown.

Such objects were never mentioned in ancient Greek or Roman writings. If it were not for the work of a curious scientist, perhaps it would never have been known that such an enigmatic "clock" existed.