Curta mechanical calculator
 

Neat-o! Scroll down for a demonstration video.

For some reason, I could see some lunkheaded TSA "agent" thinking it was some sort of destructive device.

Ooo, I want one! (It will go nicely with my abacus)

I just looked on evilbay, and it looks like it would be hard to get a working Curta for less than 6 or 7 hundred dollars, maybe lots more. I wish someone would manufacture a reasonably priced reproduction. It looks like it would be great fun just to play around with.

Here is an affordable version.

No fun. That one doesn't have a crank.

Here's one with a crank that costs a bit less.

I think we had one of these at the hardware store I worked at in high school. We had every piece of equipment they'd ever had, old registers and the like, downstairs in the vault. We also used a posting machine to do the accounts. Except it finally broke. And the only place you could get parts was Inida because that was the only place left that actually still used them. So we had to go computer. My cousin, who did the books, didn't take to it well.

Just a week ago our library's last public typewriter bit the dust. It was at the branch library, and once every six months we'd send a person over there who had asked to fill out a form using the typewriter. They just tried getting it repaired and apparently, no one makes parts for it anymore. It wasn't even one of the old tanks we've got in the back - a plastic model that was probably purchased when the place opened in 1978. I wonder how long the truly ancient metal ones have left. I need to ask Processing how often they use those things.

This caused me to look at pricing on typewriters, and it seems they're still not super cheap. Too many moving parts, I guess.

Two decades ago, I worked in the University of New Mexico Library, and I spent more than eighty percent of my time typing various labels on a little daisy-wheel Brother. The link in the above post brought that rushing back to my mind. I moved to Florida in 1989, and brought a bulky, expensive-cartridge bearing Selectric with me. I used to tell people I would give it up for a computer NEVER! Silly me.

I would totally use a mechanical calculator, though.