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CURTA TYPE II LIECHTENSTEIN MAUREN AG MECHANICAL CRANK CALCULATOR AUTOMATIC SLIDE RULE BY CURT HERZSTARK
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are pleased to offer this week, from an outstanding private Engineering Scientific Memorabilia Collection, an ultra RARE and hard to find CURTA, TYPE II Made in Liechtenstein Mechanical Calculator in MINT CONDITION. Excellent working, excellent mechanically, all complete and ready to calculate!
measures: 4.5"tall with hand-crank, 2.5"diameter; Marked TYPE II, Serial N: 554656, Made in Liechtenstein, Customs Union with Switzerland by CONTINA AG MAUREN, System Curt Herzstark.
The Curta was a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. It had a brilliantly compact design, a small cylinder that could 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.
Curta Calculator was invented by Curt Herzstark (1902-1988) in the 1930s in Vienna. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum, Deutsches Reichspatent Nummer: 747073. His work on the pocket calculator stopped in 1938 when the Nazis forced him and his company to concentrate on manufacturing measuring instruments and distance gauges for the German army.
Curta, Austria, Liechtenstein, year 1947...
Over the years rumors were heard that Mr. Curt Herzstark secretly developed the Curta while imprisoned in a German concentration camp. Apparently this is almost true. Herzstark was a prisoner at Buchenwald but the camp leaders were aware of his work and encouraged it. They apparently wanted to give the invention to the Fuehrer as a victory gift at the end of the war! Herzstark was given a drawing board and worked on the design day and night. The camp was liberated in April, 1945 by the Americans. Herzstark survived as did his revolutionary concept for a miniature calculator.
The Curta looks like a small metal pepper-mill or coffee grinder. It is, in fact, a precision instrument which performs calculations mechanically using no electric or electronic parts. I can best describe the sensation of turning the crank on a Curta as being similar to winding a fine 35mm camera. To the best of my knowledge it is the smallest mechanical calculating machine ever built.
Although several prototypes were made earlier, the first production began in April, 1947. The last Curta was made in November, 1970 but they were still sold until early 1973. By then, pocket electronic calculators were selling for under $100 and a precision mechanical instrument like the Curta could no longer compete.
The Curta II is slightly larger than the original Curta. It was first produced in 1954 and has a larger numeric capacity than the Curta I.
In 1949 only about 300 Curtas could be produced each month. By 1952, production had increased to about 1,000 units per month. Over the course of about 20 years approximately 80,000 of the Curta I and 60,000 of the Curta II were constructed.
CURTA ONLINE SIMULATOR COULD BE TESTED AT THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE:
http://www.vcalc.net/curta_simulator_en.htm
below you can notice former factory building of the CONTINA AG in Mauren, FL. Nowadays possessed by Hilti AG.
Price: USD $ 3999
Shipping cost: USD $ 15.95
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