An Interview with Curt Herzstark

By 1938, Hertzstark had applied for patents for his new design and had made a couple of prototypes of the basic mechanism out of Bakelite plastic to demonstrate the principle. Unfortunately, that's as far as he got because in March 1938 the Anschluss took place and Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht marched over the border to annex Austria.

The inside of a Cu... See more

Then along came Curt Herzstark, a young man who in the 1920s regularly traveled through the former Austrian Empire selling mechanical calculators to banks and other businesses. It was on these travels that he heard the same complaints from his customers.

In the late 1940s, Hertzstark had filed new patents and eventually found a backer in the Prince of Liechtenstein. The country, where Hertzstark resettled until his death in 1988, was looking to expand its economy and the Prince agreed to help set up a company to build and market the Curta, the Contina AG Mauren, with Hertzstark holding 30 percent o... See more

"And again and again, wherever one went, competitors came with wonderful, big machines, which were ever more expensive and electric, but something was missing in the world market," said Herzstark in an extensive interview (PDF) conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute in 1987. "'I would like to have a machine that fits into my pocket and can calc... See more

1/? the (abridged) story of Curt Herzstark, the brilliant Viennese engineer who invented an incredibly complex handheld mechanical calculator in the Buchenwald concentration camp

1/? the (abridged) story of Curt Herzstark, the brilliant Viennese engineer who invented an incredibly complex handheld mechanical calculator in the Buchenwald concentration camp