{"id":2076,"date":"2004-01-04T21:40:18","date_gmt":"2004-01-05T00:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/bb\/viewtopic.php?p=745"},"modified":"2010-05-08T22:55:19","modified_gmt":"2010-05-09T01:55:19","slug":"curta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2004\/01\/04\/curta\/","title":{"rendered":"Curta!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is too good to pass up even in my currently busy state.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2004_01_01_archive.html#107315897941109723\">Boing Boing<\/a> points at a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciam.com\/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&amp;colID=1&amp;articleID=0008177C-EA28-1FD3-A7EA83414B7F012C\">Scientific American article<\/a> and an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vcalc.net\/cu.htm\">astounding webpage<\/a> about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vcalc.net\/curta_simulator_en.htm\">Curta<\/a>, the world&#8217;s first mechanical pocket calculator.<\/p>\n<p>I remember seeing this marvel advertised in Scientific American in the late 60&#8217;s and even holding one in my hands a little later &#8211; I don&#8217;t remember who owned it, but it was an extremely sexy piece of machinery. The 17&#8243; PowerBook of its day. Just turning the crank and seeing\/hearing\/feeling all the little internal gears purring and the numbers clicking into place was geek heaven.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also an extremely interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbi.umn.edu\/oh\/display.phtml?id=82\">interview with Curt Herzstark<\/a>, the inventor of the device (it&#8217;s a 67-page PDF file).<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately I couldn&#8217;t afford the Curta at that time &#8211; it cost US$125, if I recall correctly, and there were serious shipping charges and import duties on top of that. I had to content myself with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sliderule.ca\/faber.htm\">Faber-Castell duplex slide rule<\/a> (pictured at top left on the linked page), which was capable of 4 or 5 significant digits and saw me all the way through engineering school. And, from a practical standpoint, did more complex calculations too.<\/p>\n<p>Soon after that, in the early 70s, electronic calculators came up and both the Curta and slide rules became obsolete. I still have my slide rule here nearby, but I regret not having bought a Curta somehow&#8230; a specimen in good condition is worth more than US$1000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is too good to pass up even in my currently busy state. Boing Boing points at a Scientific American article and an astounding webpage about the Curta, the world&#8217;s first mechanical pocket calculator. I remember seeing this marvel advertised in Scientific American in the late 60&#8217;s and even holding one in my hands a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sci","tag-history"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1q3Zc-curta","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}