Curt Herzstark

Curta (Type I) mechanical calculator shown in the operational position (left hand). The crank is turned with the right hand.

Curt Herzstark was born on July 26, 1902 in Vienna, and died October 27, 1988 in Nendeln, Liechtenstein. During World War II, Curt Herzstark's plans for a mechanical pocket calculator (the Curta) literally saved his life.

In 1938, while he was technical manager of his father's company Rechenmaschinenwerk AUSTRIA Herzstark & Co., Herzstark had already completed the design, but could not manufacture it due to the Nazi German annexation of Austria. Instead, the company was ordered to make measuring devices for the German army. In 1943, perhaps influenced by the fact that his father was a liberal Jew, the Nazis arrested him for "helping Jews and subversive elements" and "indecent contacts with Aryan women" and sent him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. However, the reports of the army about the precision-production of the firm AUSTRIA and especially about the technical expertise of Herzstark led the Nazis to treat him as an "intelligence-slave".

His imprisonment at Buchenwald seriously threatened his health, but his condition improved when he was called to work in the factory linked to the camp, which was named after Wilhelm Gustloff. There he was ordered to make a drawing of the construction of his calculator, so that the Nazis could ultimately give the machine to the Führer as a gift after the successful end of the war. The preferential treatment this allowed ensured that he survived his stay at Buchenwald until the camp's liberation in 1945, by which time he had redrawn the complete construction from memory.

Trivia

The Curta is referenced in chapter four of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. The chapter is entitled 'Math Grenades', referring to protagonist Cayce Pollard mistaking them for hand grenades at first glance.

References

• Cliff Stoll, Scientific American, 290(1):92–99, January 2004.

External links

• Biographical information about Curt Herzstark and the Curta calculator.
• Interview of Curt Herzstark at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Herzstark interview in German.

Persondata
Name	Herzstark, Curt
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1902
Place of birth
Date of death	1988
Place of death