I was just in an email ‘conversation’ with someone when I mentioned my Curta mechanical calculator, and he responded “Pictures Please!” so here we are… Just in case you haven’t heard about this before ...

It’s no bigger than a drinking glass, and it fits easily in the palm of the hand. It resembles a pepper grinder—or perhaps a hand grenade. The diminutive “Curta” is a striking machine, a mechanical ...

The CURTA mechanical calculator literally saved its inventor’s life. [Curt Herzstark] had been working on the calculator in the 1930s until the Nazis forced him to focus on building other tools for ...

I first learned about the Curta from this January 2004 article in Scientific American, by Cliff Stoll. Unfortunately, the article is not available for free. But you can purchase a PDF of the whole Jan ...