Design of the Curta. 12 Days of Curtsmas 4

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  • Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
  • 12 Days of Curtsmas Chapter 4: Design of the Curta
    This is a Curta Type I, built in 1952. Stay tuned for episodes every other day, December 3 - 25. Thanks as always to the person who gave me the Curta.
    Chapter 11 (December 23) will be a mailbag episode! So please ask questions, etc.
    End song inspired by "Hotter than a Molotov" by The Coup. • The Coup: Hotter Than ...
    Jingle bells sound from www.freesoundsl..., CC-BY-4.0
    Curta case photo by Wikimedia user Nol Aders, CC-BY-SA-3.0 commons.wikime...

КОМЕНТАРІ • 35

  • @johnsrabe
    @johnsrabe 10 місяців тому +14

    This series is a lot better than I was expecting, and I had high hopes in the first place. I appreciate the amount of work you are putting into it. Thanks!

  • @thinkbolt
    @thinkbolt 10 місяців тому +6

    "I'll pretend I've already invented everything." Man! That's confidence!

  • @ryanatkinson2978
    @ryanatkinson2978 9 місяців тому +1

    I was over at a friend's house when I noticed a Curta sitting on his shelf, I about shat myself out of excitement. So damn cool

  • @johnsrabe
    @johnsrabe 10 місяців тому +7

    1:56 Wow. What a great way of stimulating your own creativity. Jump right over the mental roadblock of how, get to the what, and go back to how! This would work in any number of applications.

  • @pankoBreadCroisant
    @pankoBreadCroisant 10 місяців тому +4

    those are some serious KNURLS

  • @alanesq1
    @alanesq1 10 місяців тому +6

    I didn't mind that these are so stupidly expensive as they are just some novelty with no interest to me. Now I want one, so thanks for that ;-)

    • @MattMcIrvin
      @MattMcIrvin 10 місяців тому +1

      I'm getting this yearning for old-school calculating machines but I think slide rules might be much easier to collect--much cheaper, and more likely to be in working order after 60 or 70 years!

    • @alanesq1
      @alanesq1 10 місяців тому +2

      @@MattMcIrvin Be very careful, I just happened to watch a video on UA-cam about a Friden machine and next thing I know I have 30+ adding machines - lol

  • @MarkEichin
    @MarkEichin 10 місяців тому +2

    I've always been fascinated at how most mechanical calculating devices have at most one spark of an idea and then years of refinement... where the Curta is just an Entirely Different Thing that didn't evolve from other devices, nor did anything really evolve *from* it. I'm glad you actually have one!

  • @jasonlee5477
    @jasonlee5477 10 місяців тому +4

    So cool, I would love to an Apple style product announcement featuring the Curta

    • @ChrisStaecker
      @ChrisStaecker  10 місяців тому +2

      Would've fit in perfectly next to Picasso in their old "think different" campaign

  • @biquinary
    @biquinary 10 місяців тому +7

    Knowing Prof. Staecker, there is likely a video planned for this, but just wanted to mention to the interested viewer that Curt Herzstark was prevented from freely working on the CURTA calculator because of the "difficult circumstances" in which he lived.
    (I'm being deliberately vague here because Prof. Staecker never fails to deliver smart commentary, so I'd rather leave it in his capable hands. The wikipedia page for Herzstark has a summary you can check out in the meantime)

    • @ChrisStaecker
      @ChrisStaecker  10 місяців тому +9

      no spoilers!

    • @pierQRzt180
      @pierQRzt180 10 місяців тому +2

      Yes, like an very sad anime plot. Where you get spared only to create a present for a guy with funny mustaches.

    • @Nashvillain10SE
      @Nashvillain10SE 10 місяців тому +2

      SPOILER ALERT: There are 8 more episodes on the Curta!!!

  • @RossMarsden
    @RossMarsden 9 місяців тому

    It's official. I now want one of these. I will take steps to find one and buy it.

  • @jogloran
    @jogloran 9 місяців тому

    I know it’s a weird thing to compliment you for, but aside from the excellent content, your diction has me in stitches.

  • @pierQRzt180
    @pierQRzt180 10 місяців тому +1

    those videos are too underrated. UA-cam should obscure all the other videos and show only yours for a couple of days to balance things.

  • @LuisRodriguez-vh6fg
    @LuisRodriguez-vh6fg 10 місяців тому +1

    I'll be home for Curtsmas 🎉

  • @Bavergnag
    @Bavergnag 10 місяців тому +5

    ~ORIGINAL~

    • @Glutnix
      @Glutnix 10 місяців тому

      Hard to believe we had to wait FOUR EPISODES to get an ~ORIGINAL~ from Chris

  • @_skysick_
    @_skysick_ 10 місяців тому +3

    Are we going to get a video about how the mechanism does carries?

    • @_skysick_
      @_skysick_ 10 місяців тому +1

      Is there just a tooth between the 9 and 0 on each digit? Or does the main drum somehow make separate carry teeth unnecessary?

    • @ChrisStaecker
      @ChrisStaecker  10 місяців тому +6

      @@_skysick_ It's a bit more complicated than just an extra tooth, because the subtraction mode needs to do carrys differently. Popping the doink shifts the drum so that it adds complementary digits, AND it also shifts the carry system to behave appropriately for subtraction instead of addition.
      I don't have a video planned on this- to me it seemed more complicated than it was worth, and I just about hit my limit for doing animations, which is much harder for me than traditional filming.
      All this is shown in the video "How the curta works" by @Mechanicalcomputing, around 4:20. He uses the original parts to show it, which is cool but sometimes makes it hard to follow.

    • @_skysick_
      @_skysick_ 10 місяців тому

      ​@@ChrisStaeckerThanks I'll check it out. Hopefully it's clearer than the bizarre CGI animation I found about it!

    • @MattMcIrvin
      @MattMcIrvin 10 місяців тому

      Aha, that's how that +1 for complement subtraction works--the rightmost digit has an extra gear that engages the next digit's teeth in subtraction mode! (And there's a ten-tooth gear for subtracting 0, so the addition is at the opposite end of the drum from what I guessed earlier.)

  • @legofreak5769
    @legofreak5769 10 місяців тому

    wow it really is smaller than i realized

  • @josephmarrow5598
    @josephmarrow5598 10 місяців тому

    Recently watched your video on publishing a paper, really encouraging given how much time I've spent making no progress

  • @lafcursiax
    @lafcursiax 10 місяців тому

    5:18 Oh, those are flecks of rubber? I thought they were the ground pepper!

  • @MattMcIrvin
    @MattMcIrvin 10 місяців тому

    Designing the product from the user interface in is something good teams do all the time, but it's easy for an engineer to think in the other direction and end up with something whose behavior is determined by its implementation and is not intuitive to the user. Some of the early calculators seem to be like that.

  • @MichaelGriffin_
    @MichaelGriffin_ 10 місяців тому

    Every video I want one more and then I have to remind myself of the truth.

  • @ColtonRMagby
    @ColtonRMagby 10 місяців тому +1

    The mechanism inside the Curta is simple, yet effective.

  • @Lilac757
    @Lilac757 10 місяців тому

    For the algorithm.

  • @getjaketospace
    @getjaketospace 10 місяців тому

    Curta

  • @StephenRansom47
    @StephenRansom47 10 місяців тому

    Boy, that Noodle was sure working for Curt. His dad must have been So Proud 🥹 “Just look at my boy go!” 🤔Jinkies maybe he’s going to surpass me … NA! He’s just a kid. *then Dad panics 😅
    These videos are great, I remember seeing my first Curta online … and I was like, “It’s a mini Babbage Device!” 😳