Ever since reading William Gibson's /Pattern Recognition/ I've wanted to own one of these. I inherited a much less sophisticated mechanical calculator from my grandfather. It is a flat rectangle that has slots cut in to both sides, about the size of an A5 sheet of paper. One side is addition and the opposite is subtraction. A clever use of space, but not half as clever as a Curta.
Hey, totally hijacking this thread for something else, but some days ago you commented on my thread about your life experiences, and I was wondering if I could send you a private message asking about something you pointed out to me. Feel free to email me, or I can send you an email message/discord/whatever you may prefer.
user_extended@proton.me
If you do not wish to say anything, thanks anyway for your comment in that other thread, I have re-read it many times and I am genuinely thankful to you for making it.
This book was where I learned of the Curta as well...but the whole Blue Ant trilogy was a gateway to existing things I had no idea were real. Gibson turning his considerable talents to something close to "real life" makes these three books my favorites of his.
When I first was invited up to my now-wife's apartment 11 years ago and saw a Curta - which was sitting on top of her operating NeXTCube - I knew I'd hit the jackpot.
I’ve got one, in pristine condition no less. Using it is satisfying in a way that is very hard for me to bring across in text. You can feel the mechanism when turning the crank, and it feels very “intricate, but not fragile”. It clicks and burrs just in the right way.
I have once or twice used it for simple calculations in some special context for fun (calculating salary related stuff after a raise or something like that), but obviously it’s much quicker to just enter that into a modern calculator or computer.
I have a pristine one, also. It was one of the first things I bought fifty years ago, when I got a real job - I'd always wanted one. Turning the crank sets up an amazing internal vibration as the mechanism operates.
I saw one of these still in use before the takeover by electronic calculators in the 1970s. I think it was replaced by a TI-58, which was programmable and was supplied by a manufacturer with several magnetic program cards for the specific field of use (industrial lab).
I have one of these, inherited from my dad who was a physicist working as an engineer. I frankly have no idea how it works, but I fondly recall my dad using it before he got a calculator in the 80s
