Old mechanical stuff still holds charm of its own. And if the gadget is a relic from the annals of WWII, this charm is doubled. So as you stand smug at your portable scientific calculator, I humbly request you to take a look at the Curta mechanical calculator and tell me if that’s whack or what! Built in 1948 by Curt Herzstark when he was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, this mechanical calculator does addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and with a bit of patience, it even calculates square roots. All this with simple movements of the centrally-located cylinder.

Here’s a video explaining how this historic piece of gadgetry works. Ah the good old mechanical marvels!

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