Ancestors

Toot

Written by Bruce Sterling @bruces on 2025-01-29 at 16:07

Get yours now

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Descendants

Written by Guillotines for a Better World on 2025-01-29 at 16:08

@bruces these things are incredible https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dKN6XatdVkY

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Written by Medea Vanamonde on 2025-01-29 at 16:09

@bruces i love mechanical computing.

That became a Tech of Dead Roads like hypersonic

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Written by Ira عيرا עירא 🎗️🏴 🇱🇧🕊️🇮🇱🕊️🇵🇸☮️ on 2025-01-29 at 16:12

@bruces I really wanted to get one but then I saw the price. nope, I would rather spend that kind of money on another fountain pen or two and some interesting new ink :)

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Written by mtconleyuk on 2025-01-29 at 16:33

@bruces I first encountered these in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Amazing machines. There is apparently a project afoot to build new ones based on the original drawings; no idea how far along they are, or whether it's going to happen.

https://curtaproject.com

EDIT: The sign-up option on that page doesn't seem to work, so ...

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Written by Bill Seitz on 2025-01-29 at 16:34

@bruces https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_Recognition_(novel)

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Written by Evan Light on 2025-01-29 at 16:48

@bruces Is it a pencil sharpener (I REMEMBER THOSE) or a hand grenade? I can't tell....

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Written by Ron Jeffries on 2025-01-29 at 16:49

@bruces I have always wanted one. They have always been more costly than my want. So cool!

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Written by mschomm on 2025-01-29 at 18:01

@bruces Much more reliable results than with artificial hallucinating parrots.

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Written by Lenz Grimmer on 2025-01-29 at 18:29

@bruces already done 😉

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Written by Sven Vabar on 2025-01-29 at 20:22

@bruces

In the Soviet Union the most famous mechanical calculator was Feliks M, named, of course, after Felix Dzerzhinsky. It was a copy of Swedish Odhner. Not a very reliable copy, at that; my mum was using one Feliks M. It was produced in big quantities until the end of the 1970s.

https://www.nzeldes.com/HOC/IronFelix.htm

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Written by tom jennings on 2025-01-29 at 23:03

@bruces

A friend has one. Operating it is extraordinary. The feel and sounds it makes are like nothing else. It's wonderfully otherworldly.

Of course the story behind them is breathtaking and appalling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta?wprov=sfla1

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Written by 🇺🇦 haxadecimal on 2025-01-29 at 23:08

@tomjennings @bruces

I have a Type 1. It worked fine when I first got it, but shortly thereafter developed a fault. The add/subtract slider moves, but now it only subtracts. I'm not willing to open it myself; I'll have to find an expert to fix it.

I'm going to try 3D printing the published (mostly) plastic 3x scale working model. The model maker says it wouldn't work in plastic at 1:1, which isn't too surprising.

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Written by tom jennings on 2025-01-29 at 23:17

@brouhaha

Wow nice! I imagine repair is 1) not easy and 2) expensive. But probably worth it, there's so few of them in the world.

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Written by 🇺🇦 haxadecimal on 2025-01-29 at 23:22

@tomjennings

I'm pretty inept with mechanical things. Even if I can build the giant plastic one, and make it work, I won't try to repair a real Curta myself. It's widely reported that many new owners of Curta calculators, back in the day, took them apart out of curiosity, and were unable to reassemble them. I believe the factory had special jigs and tools.

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Written by 🇺🇦 haxadecimal on 2025-01-29 at 23:23

@tomjennings

There are certainly some people in the community that have become experts at Curta repair, so someday I'll get it fixed.

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Written by tom jennings on 2025-01-30 at 06:02

@brouhaha

There's mental paradigms in mechanical things that is far more varied than software, theoretical stuff that can seem impossible to understand. Modern digital stuff is shockingly all similar in approach, but complexity can become far vaster.

I love mechanical thought systems, theres so many I can't puzzle them out and they might as well be alien. Diversity of thought and approach to solution is greater than in code in my experience.

Code, it's all sort of one dexterity to deal with it all. Source is always text. Subtle mechanicals are another story. Zuses computers used lots of sliding flat strips to make decisions. WW2 aircraft gunnery computers are ",classic" analog techniques but intermixed mechanical and electrics

Curta, it's all peculiar to the inside of his head. The shapes are the affordances that build operations.

It's so much less corporate sameness.

There's so much beauty in the Long Tailed Pair circuit it's breathtaking.

The sameness of design today is so boring, even though the capabilities are so high.

I always prefer the beauty over industrial advantage. That's why my car are so old, the alien problem solving is often beautiful.

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Written by Phil Landmeier on 2025-01-30 at 06:28

@tomjennings @brouhaha Indeed. But I thought I was the last person alive that knew what a long-tailed pair was. Lol.

Analog design in the 70s was challenging and fun. And satisfying. Today, everything is so easy because the hard engineering has already been done for you. That's really cool too but there's no elegance to it and there's little satisfaction.

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