Sublime

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

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.

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

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

'Then along came Curt Herzstark' http://newatlas.com/curta-death-camp-calculator/45506/... See more

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

hen I will begin in German. I was born in Vienna on the 26th of January in 1902, a child of the parent Samuel Jakob Herzstark and Marie Herzstark. The marriage was a civil marriage, because my father was born a Jew, and my mother was a true Christian. But they were both free spirits. My father left Judaism but he had no affiliation and remained wit... See more