Triumphator mechanical calculator

Being a mechanical tinkerer kinda person I always have a rummage in junk shops for an elusive Curta but without success, anyways –  for my birthday a good friend gave me this;

Triumphator CRN2 mechanical desktop calculator from 1950-60’s. Gummed up with fluff and dust so time to remove its covers and free everything with WD40 and foam swabs.

Now freed up, oiled and working properly.

Brave to take the covers off! I’d be terrified of bits flying everywhere!

Keep looking for a curta though, they’re ace 😉

There’s a 3d printable version of the Curta available.

I would love to have a go at printing it, but it’s quite a project…

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1943171

can you write ‘boobies’ on it? Looks like it might be tricky to turn upside down.

Won’t do ‘shelloil’ either! Bit rubbish really

I’m old enough that when I went to secondary school we used those!

Some time during my first year the maths teacher bought one of the first electronic calculators, four function (add, subtract, multiply, divide) and using Reverse Polish Notation, it cost £200! This was in 1970/1 when the average salary was somewhere in the £2000 region.

That looks fantastic.

I also used this sort at school, must have been early 1970’s. Very noisy when there’s a room full of 12 year olds.

We had them at school in the 60s. My last year of primary school was spent down in Oxfordshire and the primary school had 3 new Curtas!

While you’re searching the junk shops if you find an old science lab set of scales buy them if the weight set is included, the value of the little bits of platinum used for the tiny weights is remarkably high.

A blind mate of mine in college had a braille version. I was astonished what it would do and how quick it was.

My dad’s job out of the RAF in the 60s or so was training the engineers who traveled the country servicing electronic calculators! Hard to believe in todays throw away society.