Page "Deferent and epicycle" Paragraph 2

It is called Ptolemaic after the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, although it had been developed by previous Greek astronomers such as Apollonius of Perga and Hipparchus of Rhodes, who used it extensively, during the second century BC, almost three centuries before Ptolemy.

Epicyclical motion is used in the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical device for computing the phase and position of the Moon using four gears, two of them engaged in an eccentric way that closely approximates Kepler's second law, i. e. the Moon moves faster at perigee and slower at apogee.