Curta Calculator...Coolest Thing Ever!

It's an amazingly clever device. The history behind it is almost unbelievable. I wish I had one, but the last time I checked the price of one was way beyond my budget.

I remember using something similar before electronics got big. The drum was horizontal, and it made a wonderful chattering sound. The sound of a whole classroom was hilarious as we tried to see who could crank the fastest. Despite much effort, nobody ever manages to break one. The teacher rapidly decided that log tables and slide rules would be a good idea.

At the beginning of my career I was confronted with computation of gears. In order to avoid the error cascade due to reduced number of decimals we used mechanical devices with an horizontal shaft and trigonometric function tables for astronomical computations with at least 9 decimals.

It was a pleasure as long as the devices were only hand actuated. After a time some developped electrical driven systems which were so sensitive that every week we had to ask for maintenance. We went back to the simple solution.

Of course for all other computations the slide rule was the tool. I have still the last model which has a developped length of over 6ft! on only about 1.5ft physical length. It is very precise and it offered a lot of functions beside multiplication/division or roots. The rule I have has a nice story. I had the previous model and it was destroyed by accident. Production was stopped so that in shops no more rules were available. I called the manufacturer ( Germany) and he send my graciously the last model with his thanks for the fact that I was appreciating his work!

A short time after I convinced the management to buy a mini computer programmable in Fortran via a printer which we also used as output device. When I think how expensive it was for the very low memory (still magnetic with rings on the crossing wires) and with hard disks 10" in diameter and compare with the power of today's PS I can appreciate the evolution only during my time.

Thanks, that is interesting. I would love to have one, but unfortunately they're a little pricey for my "toy budget".

Back in the 50's and 60's, we used them in our sports car rallies. They were also expensive back then.

The exact model is pricey, but some of the older version can be had reasonale cheap Check out e-bay etc, About £190 That's not cheap, but if you can share it with younger family members its well worth it. For my tuppence, Learniing to use log tables is well worth it. Knowing how to use a slide rule is well worth the time. Electronic calc's is a 'cheat'. If a person can't do it from basics, they are mising the best of.

I like that stuff, but am not snooty over it. People need to know the tech of there age, but if time allows it's no bad thing to understand other methods.

Do you guys know if the moderators of the forum now edit the text in someone's post? I ask because my last sentence..."Any of you have one of these things?" is not exactly what I wrote. It doesn't relate to the emoticon I added. Or I could just be losing my mind.

It's the mind boggling effect of trying to analyse the workings of the device that does it!

Somehow, there's always some ahole smarter than the rest of us...most frustrating......

Some years ago I had acquired a pristine operating manual for one in an estate sale. Sadly no machine. But I put the manual on ebay and it got bid up to $120 within a couple of days. I always wished I had found the machine itself.

I had used this a lot back in the early sixties:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Brunsviga_4-Spezies-Rechner.jpg

There were "FACIT" calculators based on same principle, but those machines have gone now after arrival of digital calculators.