[PLUG-TALK] Curta mechanical calculator

[Denis Heidtmann]

I remember my uncle, a civil engineer, using paper and pencil and log trig
tables, to close polygons for land surveying. He never used a
calculator-just addition and subtraction with a pencil.  The paper was
yellow legal size, which he easily filled.  I went from slide rule to
electronic calculator in the mid '60s.  Never saw this device you mention.
I do remember motorized calculators making disturbing clunking noises for
division in a college lab in the early '60s.

I am certainly old enough to have been exposed to this marvel. I guess I
led a deprived life.

-Denis

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 3:37 PM Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Dec 2021, Galen Seitz wrote:
>
> > <
> https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/the-remarkable-history-of-the-hand-cranked-curta-mechanical-calculator/
> >
>
> galen,
>
> I had never heard of this device. My age group used sliderules for
> calculations and I had a small collection of them through high school. My
> HS
> class built a working cyclotron (ran it just before graduation) with parts
> from Collins Radio and the Brookhaven National Laboratory. We all used
> sliderules.
>
> Rich
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org
> PLUG-talk mailing list
> PLUG-talk at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk
>