First toy

I was digging in my fathers' home attic today and finaly I found it : a terrific Brunsviga 13 KL, THE mechanical calculator of 50's and 60's. It was my favorite toy at age 4 or 5, back in the 60's. A little later, at age 8, I was working in the family shop during the holidays and vacation periods. I was the little boy at the desk, doing the accounts of clients with this machine. Work and pleasure...

Two or three years later, around 1973, the first Hewlett Packard electronic calculator landed in the shop, the famous HP-35 (using the reverse polish notation). Its tiny red led digits impressed me a lot. Followed by the first bloody pc, and so on. The great Brunswiga became a relic of the past and disappeared..

Spent the day cleaning the 9-kilo german beauty and reading on the net about it. Solved some trigonometry equations then, with the help of this lady. It's amazing how many mathematical functions can be done with this apparently simple and totally mechanical device. Former models were used even for cryptography during WW2, both from Allies and Germans. A fascinating world... A new passion for mechanical calculators?..