Curta calculator
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Curta is a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. It has an extremely compact design, a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It can be used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and, with more difficulty, square roots and other operations. The Curta's design is a descendant of Gottfried Leibniz's Stepped Reckoner and Thomas's Arithmometer, accumulating values on cogs, which are added or complemented by a stepped drum mechanism.
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[edit] The inventor
The Curta was invented by Curt Herzstark in 1938 just before he was a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Following the end of WWII he completed and perfected the design. They were made in Liechtenstein by Contina AG Mauren. They were widely considered the best portable calculators available, until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s.
[edit] Description and use
Numbers are entered using slides (one slide per digit) on the side of the device. The revolution counter and result counter appear on the top. A single turn of the crank adds the input number to the result counter, at any position, and increment the revolution counter accordingly. Pulling the crank out slightly before turning it performs a subtraction instead of an addition. Multiplication, division, and other functions require a series of crank operations.
The Curta was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill" due to its shape and means of operation. It was also termed the "math grenade", due to its superficial resemblance to a certain type of hand grenade.
[edit] Curta Type I and Type II
The Type I Curta has 8 digits of slides, a 6-digit revolution counter, and an 11-digit result counter. According to the advertising literature, it weighs only 8 ounces (about 230 grams). The larger Type II Curta, introduced in 1954, has 11 digits of slides, an 8-digit revolution counter, and a 15-digit result counter.
An estimated 140,000 Curta calculators have been made (80,000 Type I and 60,000 Type II). The last Curta was produced in November, 1970.[citation needed]
[edit] Gallery
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 A partially disassembled Curta calculator, showing the digit slides and the stepped drum behind them. |
 Curta Type I calculator showing view from top. |
 Curta Type I calculator showing view from bottom. |
[edit] Use in car rallies
The Curta was popular among contestants in sports car rallies during the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s. Even after the introduction of the electronic calculator for other purposes, they were used in time-speed-distance (TSD) rallies to aid in computation of times to checkpoints, distances off-course, etc., since the early electronic calculators did not fare well with the bounces and jolts of rally racing.[citation needed]
Contestants who used such calculators were often called "Curta-crankers" by those who were limited to paper and pencil, or who used computers linked to the car's wheels.[citation needed]
Curta calculators contributed to the saying when describing the process of calculating, "Cranking out the answer."[citation needed]
[edit] The Curta in print
The Curta is featured in the novel Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, where one of the minor characters has an interest in them.
The Curta is also the subject of an article by Cliff Stoll in the January 2004 edition of Scientific American.
[edit] External links
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