Shipwreck? There’s an app for that. No Angry Birds, though. Angry Fish, maybe. Angry Captain, definitely.
… Read the rest
Probably belonging to the ship’s captain, the wooden object, whose cover is finely carved with decorations, is the size of a modern seven-inch tablet, but it’s much thicker. It consists of a set of five overlaid rectangular panels carved with frames and covered with wax. Notes could be taken on those panels, as shown by writing in Greek which is still visible on the wax. A primitive “app” is hidden on the bottom panel: a sliding lid revealing a hidden plate with carved spaces. “When you draw the sliding part, there are small weights used as an assay balance,” Ufuk Kocabaş, director of Istanbul University’s department of marine archeology and the Yenikapi Shipwrecks Project, told Hurriyet Daily News. Since it was a merchant ship, the tool was likely used to assess the value of some items.