What if Babbage’s Difference Engine spawned a “laptop”?
It’s hard to find more desirable and satisfying (in a tactile sort of way) mechanical fetish item from the age of early computing…
For years Curta calculators enjoyed a cult status among collectors, and as recently as in 2003 they were featured in William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition” book. However, I daresay, not featured enough. This marvel of mechanical engineering should be given more exposure, especially given the bizarre and spooky circumstances of its origin.
– Entirely mechanical, no electricity or batteries involved.
– Designed by Curt Herzstark in 1938 and perfected inside a concentration camp.
– Considered to be the most efficient portable calculator (until electronic calculators came in the 70s)
– Simply a thing of beauty, stunning piece of engineering art.
The Curta Calculator Page has everything you might want to know about this device and it’s inventor.
While there are a bunch of simulators like this one and this one, it’s about time someone at MAKE or other DIY site built one for real.
Anyone out there have one or used one?
Pretty cool!
Nifty!
I still know a couple of guys who own a Curta. We actually used them in the field, surveying for Kern County in the early 1970s. The county only had 2 hand cranked Monroe Calculators and 4 crews so some guys got Curtas. The Monroes were for desktop use but we could fit them in the trucks we used.
If you had a book of trig tables and a Curta you could go anywhere and survey and navigate, or aim artillery, while there.
That looks neat. I think there is a market for these things if they can be mass produced for under 100 bucks. This ad suggests that they retailed for 125 in ’71, so that might not be possible.
Oh well. Wonder where I can get my hands on one?
I think the abacus has to credited for its revolutionary contribution to the portable calculator scene, but this reminds me of a mechanical abacus. I need one. now.
#6.
Google “ebay curta calculator” and you find …
http://tinyurl.com/6kf67b
Happy, curtacalculating.
Steve Jobs is coming out with an iCurta.
DIY! Yeah right, these babies are a prime example of precision engineering, a complex combination of gear ratios and syncronisms are what make this honey work. Unless you like to repair watches and have precision machining tools I doubt this project’s for you. Bought a mechanical calculator at a yard sale when I was a kid, same principle larger scale and electrically powered. I’m sure it was some accountant’s best friend. It didn’t work so I decided to try to fix it. HA! Well, it was interesting as hell but at 12 years old I wasn’t ready for something with thousands of parts.
#5 They got some on eBay but you’d better have some deep pockets….
http://tinyurl.com/5dx825
2300 bucks with four hours left to go? Yowza! This hobby might be a little too spendy for my tastes.
There was a great article about the Curta in Jan ’04 Scientific American. Cliff Stoll of The Cuckoo’s Egg fame wrote it, and I found the article every bit as engaging as the book.
I still have one of these lovely gems. We used them for calculating in Time/Speed/Distance rallyes in the 70s. Turning the crank produces a wonder of synchronized sounds.
#12
Thanks for the tip Jim; I’ll dust off the old copies.
I’m thinkin you cant carry that on a commercial aircraft.
I guess I read the SA article. Glad to know people are trying to save them.
Old Mechanical Cash Registers always amaze me.
AWSOME!!! I’m going to get one of these. There are a few in India on the cheap. I’m surprised that John C. doesn’t have one.
Lesson learned…. if you are ever at a pawn shop, garage sale, estate sale and you see one of these cheap, grab it!
Unfortunately, the are like a Swiss Watch – they need to be periodically cleaned, and have about a ZILLION PARTS – including SPRINGS, which usually escape into the wild upon disassembly !!!
Neato! That would make a great paper weight when it wasn’t being used. So I expect there are a number of them sitting on various executives’ desks. Now if they could only design one to generate unbreakable passwords, based on your birth date and SSN. But I suspect a solar powered electronic version would be easier and cheaper.
Ya know, for the briefest moment, I though it might be a high precision pepper corn grinder. With multiple “Undo” feature. This would be what a pepper grinder would look like if it was based on Vista. All those numerical entry levers are for the WGA feature.
We had one of these at work when I worked in a engineering office in the 1960s. I didn’t appreciate its connection with computers at that time, but do now. It was very useful and we all used it. There was just one for the whole office. I saw one on sale at an antiques fair the other day and realised that I had a connection to history.