Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/31/greatest-mechanical-calculating-devices-of-all-time.html
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I had one of these as a kid. It was a useful complement to a slide rule, since it could add and subtract.
Now you can just print your own Curta. 
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The Curta has always been one of my most favorite mechanical designs. I view it as not just great demonstration of mechanical engineering but as a work of art. The history of it basically keeping Herzstark alive while he completed it in a camp has always fascinated me as well. I would love to own one but they really maintain their value on eBay.
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Aw you lucky SOB.
I should have gotten one like 20 years ago when I first heard of them and they were cheaper. I think it’s neat!
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I got mine off eBay in the late 1990s.
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That was the time to get it, when no one knew what they were. What did you pay?
I am thinking when I originally looked you could find them for like $300ish - but that might not be me remembering right…
ETA I dream about finding one cheap an estate sale or garage sale… but then I’d probably turn around and sell it because I could really use $1000 
ISTR that the Curta had a pretty good warranty, but one thing that was NOT covered was people that took it apart to see how it worked. They were popular in engineering departments, and engineers are as a rule curious. The difficulty is that assembling it required several specialized tools.
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Is that Space Viking?
Dammit, I had the chance to half-inch a Curta at uni but didn’t do it…
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I’ll admit to being impressed by this £ s d ¼ calculator.
http://vintagecalculators.com/html/addo.html
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i’ve been endlessly fascinated by the curta ever since i first found out about it in the late '90s. it was one of the first saved searches i had on ebay. at the time, you could see models listed in the $80-100 range, which was way out of my pricerange (i don’t think i spent more than $50 on anything on ebay for the first 10+ years or so.) eventually, the price range just moved up and up and up and now it might as well be unobtanium. for a while i held out hope someone would create some form of facsimile on some place like kickstarter, but once i saw the exploded view of it, i kinda realized that that will likely never happen - the amount of parts, many of which are so very small, makes making a ‘new’ one somewhat prohibitive.
i think my only now is to just wait until 3D printing gets sophisticated enough for relative punters like me to print all the parts and then undertake historys most complex lego build.
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I also played with one like that my mom had. Used a knitting needle to operate it. It looked a lot more complicated than that though, not so clean looking. I haven’t been able to find one though. I’m curious, what does one search for to get that kind, what exactly is it called? If I search for mechanical calculator, I get a lot of results for all these other various sorts listed in the OP.
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The GOAT!
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Mine had a stylus attached to it. I just searched for “mechanical calculator” and found that in among all the other types. I don’t know if there is a generic term, but one brand name is Magic Brain:
Here’s a video for the Addiator/Addifix
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And here’s a hexadecimal version!
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I’ve always been fond of the very steampunk stylings of the ball-and-disk integrator. It’s more of a component than a computer in itself; but it shows up(though typically in something more utilitarian than gorgeously overengineered massive brass) in a lot of more complex mechanical computers; especially ones that do calc rather than arithmetic.
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Known for its precision
Seems a bit superfluous - isn’t this kind of the whole point? I guess those not known for their precision didn’t make the list. 
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