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+--- Thread: Interesting Article on the Curta (/thread-17812.html)
Interesting Article on the Curta - John Keith - 12-13-2021 01:26 PM
Saw this last night, thought it might be of interest.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/the-remarkable-history-of-the-hand-cranked-curta-mechanical-calculator/
RE: Interesting Article on the Curta - smp - 12-13-2021 02:25 PM
I saw it, too, and I also thought it was great.
Thanks for posting this.
smp
RE: Interesting Article on the Curta - Maximilian Hohmann - 12-13-2021 03:11 PM
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
RE: Interesting Article on the Curta - Ren - 12-14-2021 07:32 PM
Thanks for sharing your find!
I also learned, that IF I ever get my hands on a Curta,
to NOT TAKE IT APART!
B^)
RE: Interesting Article on the Curta - BobVA - 12-14-2021 11:14 PM
(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.
RE: Interesting Article on the Curta - Ren - 12-15-2021 02:13 AM
[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!