Curta Calculators are way more complex, portable, and ultra-geek cool.
Posted on 10/10/2011 1:44:00 PM PDT by bkopto
The world's oldest running car, an 1884 De Dion Bouton Et Trapardoux Dos-A-Dos Steam Runabout, made history Friday, fetching $4.62 million at RM Auctions' Hershey, Pennsylvania event. Before a packed house, the 127-year-old ride quickly eclipsed its $500,000 starting bid.
By the time the dust had settled, the gavel fell at $4.2 million. The final price included a ten-percent buyer's premium. The crowd began applauding as soon as the car crept onto the stage and the enthusiasm didn't wane until well after the sale.
The Runabout had been in the same family for 81 years prior to the sale, and is one of six De Dion tricycles known to still exist. A total of 20 of the three-wheelers were built. When new, the trike had a top speed of 38 mph and a range of 20 miles on one tank of water. The vehicle that sold last night was the only car to show up for the world's first auto race, where it averaged 16 mph over a 20-mile course.
(Excerpt) Read more at autoblog.com ...
thank you.
How similar is it to the manual Felt & Tarrant Comptometers???
There was a FR thread a few months back that had video of a Curta calculator. Pretty cool device. Had a little crank on top that you turned and the digits would register around the outer rim.
Curta Calculators are way more complex, portable, and ultra-geek cool.
Bet it has a ford rear end, and probably a 440 dodge motor. LOL
Well, yeah, but what’s a Dos-A-Dos?
AutoZone is still checking the warehouse for parts.
back-to-back. The two front passengers sat facing forward, the two back passengers sat facing backwards. You can see the back rest in the picture on post #12.
After you spent three hours trying to convince them to look them up in a book because their computers were down...
Please tell me if I’m wrong. As I remember seeing some desk top manual arithmetic machines (not sure if they’re what you’re referring to), those machines had horizontal carriages, were operated by entering numbers with keys, and results were reached by turning a crank on the arriage. My Curta has twelve tabs, each of which can be moved up or down to any digit from 0 to 9. Then you turn a crank and move the carriage to get an answer. As I said, it’s about the size of a hand grenade or hand held pepper grinder.
Yep. The guy kept saying, “Can you spell that?”
Curta Calculator
Go on ebay and search using that above term - brother, those things bring some heavy cake! And that is without the case, instructions, box. One sold with a buy it now option for $1,500.00.
Never had heard of the Curta...spent about hour reading
about this machine...one I read how people who tried to
disassemble sending the parts back to the factory to be
be put back together.Amazing machining involved
The cheapest I saw on ebay was $900
Pretty heavy I imagine
I have a Curta II model. They are the smallest four function calculator ever made. They weigh mere ounces and are built like a Swiss watch. Their nearest competitors, such as Ohdner or Facit, weighed 10+ pounds. The controls are smooth as silk. When I turn the crank, I feel and hear the faint sound of gears whizzing at high speed. As I said, they perform four functions, but division is tedious.
One-and-a-half times a Depardieu (but not quite as ugly)?
The Comptometers added, and perhaps subtracted. They are big and must weigh 20 pounds. They were suited for fast addition of ledger columns. The Curtas weighed ounces and were also capable of multiplication (not too hard) and division (very tedious).
My daddy told me the first car he ever saw was a steam car. The guy stopped near where he lived and got some wood, built up some steam and took off on down the wagon rutted “road”.
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