The Curta was a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. It had an extremely compact design, a small cylinder that fit in the palm of the hand. It could be used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and, with more difficulty, square roots and other operations. The Curta was invented by Curt Herzstark in 1938 just before he was a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Here is a video showing the steps of calculating on Curta.
Link 1 , Link 2
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Beautiful.
I used a large mechanical calculator like that at school in the sixties but much much larger - about the size of a small typewriter with the rotating handle at the side. It worked on the same basic principle but nowhere near as elegant as the Curta
These things are on ebay for over 1,000 bucks each.
The guy's voice is so fucking annoying.
"OOOOOK now we're just gonna DO THIS RIGHT HERE, and then THIS IS GONNA HAPPEN and then okay, we're all set."
otherwise, the Curta kicks ass.