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Curta01
The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark. It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill" due to its shape and means of operation; its superficial resemblance to a certain type of hand grenade also earned it the nickname "math grenade". Curtas were considered the best portable calculators available until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s. History The Curta was conceived by Curt Herzstark in the 1930s in Vienna, Austria. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum. 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. The nines' complement math breakthrough eliminated the significant mechanical complexity cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Calculator
A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or a simulation like an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator and the digital computer. Surviving notes from Wilhelm Schickard in 1623 reveal that he designed and had built the earliest known apparatus fulfilling the widely accepted definition of a mechanical calculator (a counting machine with an automated tens-carry). His machine was composed of two sets of technologies: first an abacus made of Napier's bones, to simplify multiplications and divisions first described six years earlier in 1617, and for the mechanical part, it had a dialed pedometer to perform additions and subtractions. A study of the surviving notes shows a machine that could have jammed after a few entries on the same dial. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curt Herzstark
Curt Herzstark (January 26, 1902 – October 27, 1988) was an Austrian engineer. During World War II, he designed plans for a mechanical pocket calculator (the ''Curta''). Life and career Herzstark was born in Vienna, the son of Marie and Samuel Jakob Herzstark. His father was Jewish and his mother, born a Catholic, converted to Lutheranism and raised Herzstark Lutheran. In 1938, while he was technical manager of his father's company Rechenmaschinenwerk Austria Herzstark & Co., Herzstark had already completed the design of the Curta, but could not manufacture it due to the Nazi German annexation of Austria. Instead, the company was ordered to make measuring devices for the German Army. In 1943, perhaps influenced by the fact that his father was a liberal Jew, the Nazis arrested him for "helping Jews and subversive elements" and "indecent contacts with Aryan women" and sent him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. However, the reports of the army about the precision-production ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Calculators
A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or a simulation like an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator and the digital computer. Surviving notes from Wilhelm Schickard in 1623 reveal that he designed and had built the earliest known apparatus fulfilling the widely accepted definition of a mechanical calculator (a counting machine with an automated tens-carry). His machine was composed of two sets of technologies: first an abacus made of Napier's bones, to simplify multiplications and divisions first described six years earlier in 1617, and for the mechanical part, it had a dialed pedometer to perform additions and subtractions. A study of the surviving notes shows a machine that could have jammed after a few entries on the same dial. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Xavier Thomas
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (May 5, 1785 – March 12, 1870) was a French inventor and entrepreneur best known for designing, patenting, and manufacturing the first commercially successful mechanical calculator, known as the Arithmometer. Additionally, he founded the insurance companies ''Le Soleil'' and ''L'aigle,'' which, under his leadership, became the number one insurance group in France during the early years of the Second Empire. Biography Born Charles Xavier Thomas in Colmar, France, his father was a doctor and member of the town council. After a short employment in the French administration, Thomas joined the French army in 1809. By 1813, he had risen to the position of General Manager of the supply store for all the armies stationed in Spain. His responsibilities expanded further when he was appointed Inspector of Supply for the entire French army. It was during this period that he conceived the idea for the Arithmometer, recognizing the need for a tool to assist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1948 In Austria
Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The current Constitutions of Constitution of Italy, Italy and of Constitution of New Jersey, New Jersey (both later subject to amendment) go into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British Railways. * January 4 – British rule in Burma, Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming an independent republic, named the 'Post-independence Burma (1948–1962), Union of Burma', with Sao Shwe Thaik as its first President and U Nu its first Prime Minister. * January 5 – In the United States: ** Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (''Tournament of Roses Parade'' and the ''Rose Bowl Game''). ** The first Kinsey Reports, Kinsey Report, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'', is published. * January 7 – Mantell UFO incident: Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of an unidentified fl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thingiverse
Thingiverse is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files. Providing primarily free, open-source hardware designs licensed under the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, the site allows contributors to select a user license type for the designs that they share. 3D printers, laser cutters, milling machines and many other technologies can be used to physically create the files shared by the users on Thingiverse. Thingiverse is widely used in the DIY technology and Maker communities, by the RepRap Project and by 3D printer and MakerBot operators. Numerous technical projects use Thingiverse as a repository for shared innovation and dissemination of source materials to the public. Many of the object files are intended for the purposes of repair, decoration or organization. Thingiverse houses more than a million open source hardware designs, that allow prosumers to save money by manufacturing their own products rather than purchase ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pattern Recognition (novel)
''Pattern Recognition'' is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo, and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet. The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences in ''Pattern Recognition'' from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story ''The Crying of Lot 49''. ''Pat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Gibson
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans, a "combination of Low-life, lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the Information Age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel ''Neuromancer'' (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s. After expanding on the story in ''Neuromancer'' with two more novels (''Count Zero'' in 1986 and ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' in 1988), t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curta Rechenmaschinen Im Museum Enter Solothurn
The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark. It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill" due to its shape and means of operation; its superficial resemblance to a certain type of hand grenade also earned it the nickname "math grenade". Curtas were considered the best portable calculators available until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s. History The Curta was conceived by Curt Herzstark in the 1930s in Vienna, Austria. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum. 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. The nines' complement math breakthrough eliminated the significant mechanical complexity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
