Were the people of Ancient Rome aware of advanced devices like the Antikythera mechanism?

No. How could they have been? There was no printing available, all information had to be written by hand, and transcribed by hand. Very few people were literate. And it was extremely expensive and labor intensive to produce even a single copy of a book, it had to be entirely transcribed by hand. Given there weren’t any advanced devices in standard use, how could the people of Ancient Rome have possibly known about them? They couldn’t have. One of the main reasons science and technology have developed more rapidly since the development of printing and printed books, is simply that they allow for the dissemination of information more rapidly and efficiently, so people can observe and analyze information and ideas much more easily. There is no real “scientific method” that has been developed. Progress comes by random chance and trial and error, just like in the past. It’s simply that, with increased ease of communication, people can acquire and analyze information much more easily than in the distant past. When someone stumbles on a new idea, people learn about it much more quickly than they did thousands of years ago. But, it’s still just “tinkering”, no method involved. https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Were-the-people-of-Ancient-Rome-aware-of-advanced-devices-like-the-Antikythera-mechanism