The Curta Type I was sold for $125 in the later years of production, and the Type II was sold for $175. According to Curt Herzstark, the last Curta was produced in 1972. Īn estimated 140,000 Curta calculators were made (80,000 Type I and 60,000 Type II). The Curta, however, lives on, being a highly popular collectible, with thousands of machines working just as smoothly as they did at the time of their manufacture 40, 50 or 60 years previous.
#Fake sports calculator portable
Herzstark was able to negotiate a new agreement, and money continued to flow to him.Ĭurtas were considered the best portable calculators available until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s. This ploy now backfired: without the patent rights, they could manufacture nothing. These were the same people who had earlier elected not to have Herzstark transfer ownership of his patents to the company, so that, should anyone sue, they would be suing Herzstark, not the company, thereby protecting themselves at Herzstark's expense. It was not long before Herzstark's financial backers, thinking they had got from him all they needed, conspired to force him out by reducing the value of all of the company's existing stock to zero, including his one-third interest. Franz Joseph II, Prince of Liechtenstein eventually showed interest in the manufacture of the device, and soon a newly formed company, Contina AG Mauren, began production in Liechtenstein. He began to look for financial backers, at the same time filing continuing patents as well as several additional patents to protect his work. Soviet forces had arrived in July, and Herzstark feared being sent to Russia, so, later that same month, he fled to Austria. troops on 11 April 1945, and by November Herzstark had located a factory in Sommertal, near Weimar, whose machinists were skilled enough to produce three working prototypes. In the camp, Herzstark was able to develop working drawings for a manufacturable device. And then and there I started to draw the CURTA, the way I had imagined it. Then, surely, you will be made an Aryan.' For me, that was the first time I thought to myself, my God, if you do this, you can extend your life. If it is really worth something, then we will give it to the Führer as a present after we win the war.
We will allow you to make and draw everything. Munich said, 'See, Herzstark, I understand you've been working on a new thing, a small calculating machine. While I was imprisoned inside Buchenwald I had, after a few days, told the in the work production scheduling department of my ideas. Herzstark, the son of a Catholic mother and Jewish father, was taken into custody in 1943 and eventually sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was encouraged to continue his earlier research: His work on the pocket calculator stopped in 1938 when the Nazis forced him and his company to concentrate on manufacturing precision instruments for the German army. This drum was the key to miniaturizing the Curta. The nines' complement math breakthrough eliminated the significant mechanical complexity created when "borrowing" during subtraction.
This single drum replaced the multiple drums, typically around 10 or so, of contemporary calculators, and it enabled not only addition, but subtraction through nines complement math, essentially subtracting by adding. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum. The Curta was conceived by Curt Herzstark in the 1930s in Vienna, Austria.
0 kommentar(er)
