Hey you guys, I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by sharing my latest I GOTTA HAVE THAT. This is a collectable, so the more people who want one, the more they cost. But its soooo cool, and I don't really know that many people who would appreciate it, but you guys definitely will. It's the empeg of the mechanical age. Absolutely brilliant.
What is it already? It's a
Curta Calculator . The first hand-held calculator -- totally mechanical.
The story behind this machine is as amazing as the machine itself. Prior to WW2, a Jewish man named Curt Herzstark of Austria was working in his family's adding machine business. He was captured and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. While imprisoned, he worked on trying to design a hand-held sized mechanical calculator. At the time, of course, adding machines were very large, complex, and heavy devices. This was almost an absurd idea. Herzstark survived the war and was freed when Americans liberated the camp in 1945. Herzstark moved to Liechtenstein and built a prototype.
As a mechanical engineer, I am completely in awe of this machine. I have never seen one in person, but I understand that it is built like a Swiss watch and sort of feels like winding an expensive mechanical camera like a Leica when operating it. There were two models built, the Curta II with 15 digits of precision(!) and the original Curta that had 11 digits of precision.
The Curta is a 4 function device, but because of how these functions are implemented (using an accumulator), it is relatively easy to do more complex calculations or estimations (ln, sin, cos, tan, sqrt, etc.) using fairly simple algorithms.
One very cool thing worth doing is looking at the the interactive simulators. There are
Flash and
Shockwave versions. The Shockwave version has a built-in manual, so you can read how to operate it, then go try it. The Flash sim. is better to "use", though.
Compared to a slide rule and trig/log tables, this thing is a marvel. Notice how the levers, cranks and "carriage" are perfectly placed so that the machine, after quite a bit of practice, can be used extremely quickly. I read somewhere that the body is anodized magnesium. Nothing is painted, it is anodized or engraved, meaning there's nothing to wear off. I wish things were still made this well... (our empeg being the rare exception!)
Sorry to carry on so much. I hope some of you find this as amazing as me.
Jim
PS: This rant about quality reminds me: remember HP's old calculators? They keys (usually) had two shift modes. I learned recently that the keys were molded in extremely complex dies with 3 colors of plastic. The information on the keys was not painted, it was actually molded in! Talk about outrageous. As the keys wear, the key remains perfectly legible. Another example of top shelf quality.
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