The Curta as described by Wikipedia:

The Curta was a small, hand-cranked mechanical calculator introduced in 1948. It had an extremely compact design, a small cylinder that fit in the palm of the hand. It could be used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and, with more difficulty, square roots and other operations. The Curta's design is a variant of Gottfried Leibniz's Arithmometer, accumulating values on cogs, which are added or complemented by a stepped drum mechanism.

The Curta was invented by Curt Herzstark while he was a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Following the end of WWII he completed and perfected the design. They were made in Liechtenstein by Contina AG Mauren. They were widely considered the best portable calculators available, until they were displaced by electronic calculators in the 1970s.

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Curta Documentation

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See Also:

Curta as described in Wikipedia

The CURTA Calculator Page

Jan Meyer's Curta Simulator (requires flash player)

The Digibarn's large collection of calculators and PDAs

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