Curta Mechanical Calculator
I remember this from Scientific American. They were advertised, usually with a quarter page ad, toward the back of the magazine. Way pricy for a ninth grader, almost as much as the electric guitar I was salavating. Around that time, Texas Instruments was making noise about an electronic calculator that could add and subtract, but the prototype remained a year or two away. Come to think about it, my old slide rule is probably lurking in Mom's attic somewhere. (yeah, I have a picture of that guitar in a scrapbook too) Dark Roast Blend has a set of pictures of the Curta, with a teardown sheet and a video of it in action. The blow-up pictures show why German mechanical engineering, at the time, was considered top-of-the-line. Now, amateur machinests make miniature steam engine reproductions as a sort of calling card into the ranks. I wonder if any would try their hand at a Curta reproduction. It would hold the floor at any gathering.
