Interesting Article on the Curta

[John Keith]

Saw this last night, thought it might be of interest.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/...alculator/

[smp]

I saw it, too, and I also thought it was great.
Thanks for posting this.

smp

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

When Scientific American published the article "The Curious History of the First Pocket Calculator" in 2004, prices for Curtas doubled overnight. I wonder what this new article will do to the prices... but I am pretty sure that I will never be able to ever afford the Curta II that I am still missing in my collection.

Regards
Max

[Ren]

Thanks for sharing your find!
I also learned, that IF I ever get my hands on a Curta,
to NOT TAKE IT APART!
B^)

[BobVA]

(12-14-2021 07:32 PM)Ren Wrote:  Thanks for sharing your find!
I also learned, that IF I ever get my hands on a Curta,
to NOT TAKE IT APART!
B^)

Excellent advice :-)

What apparently caught a lot of owners out was the hand-fitting of seemingly identical components. Correct reassembly required keeping the fitted parts together with their mates.

The good news is that they're pretty robust and don't typically *need* disassembly.

My Curta 2 was a refugee from a coal mining operation and didn't work when I got it. The "repair" was just removing the outer housing, flushing it with solvent to remove a couple of decades of coal dust then applying a little oil and it was back in service.

[Ren]

[quote='BobVA' pid='155489' dateline='1639523659'

Excellent advice :-)

What apparently caught a lot of owners out was the hand-fitting of seemingly identical components. Correct reassembly required keeping the fitted parts together with their mates.

The good news is that they're pretty robust and don't typically *need* disassembly.

My Curta 2 was a refugee from a coal mining operation and didn't work when I got it. The "repair" was just removing the outer housing, flushing it with solvent to remove a couple of decades of coal dust then applying a little oil and it was back in service.
[/quote]

Last year the water tower near us was repainted.
I was surprised to see that they "sandblasted" the old paint off with coal dust!