Collector146;s calculator

WHEN local businessman Prakash Khemka was browsing through the August issue of Reader8217;s Digest, his eyes lit up when he turned to page ...

WHEN local businessman Prakash Khemka was browsing through the August issue of Reader8217;s Digest, his eyes lit up when he turned to page 120. It carried a photograph of a writer8212;Cliff Stoll from Scientific American with a cylindrical machine in his hand. The caption read: Stoll holds a Curta. On the adjoining page was an article called Crunching Numbers: the curious history of world8217;s first pocket calculator. An excited Khemka pulled out his own Curta, holding it like Stoll did.

8216;8216;I instantly thought I could probably be the only person in India, or at least one of the very few in the world, to own this wonder machine. I didn8217;t know it had such a wonderful history,8217;8217; Khemka says.

CURTA, the world8217;s first mechanical pocket calculator, was developed by an Austrian called Curt Herzstark in 1948. It was in vogue till 1970 when the last of the approximately 1,50,000 Curtas rolled out of the Contina company8217;s yards in Austria. Electronic calculators edged them out.

Khemka, a commerce graduate, owns the Curta as part of his family heirloom. Apart from being a partner in the family8217;s fledging furniture and travel business, he manages his own export, clearing and forwarding business. 8216;8216;I have started searching the internet for maps, spares and operation manual of the machine. I plan to register my possession with the Collectors8217; Association of Germany,8217;8217; he says.

But it8217;s more than a mere collector8217;s item. Khemka still uses the machine for all basic operations. As Stoll writes, 8216;8216;it has the precision of a Swiss clock, craftsmanship of an old Nikon F camera and the elegance of a tango.8217;8217;

A man of many passions, Khemka is a member of National Geographic Society. He got the membership for his study of wild honey bees of India. He also invented a method to process buttons from coconut shells and exported them to European countries in the Eighties. When the coconut-producing states noticed this innovation, they started replicating it. Transport expenses finally forced Khemka to wind up the buttons business.

One of Khemka8217;s passions is to collect antiques. He has an exclusive collection of beautiful swords and knives of the world8217;s best makes, antique pens and coins. But naturally, the Curta tops the favourites list.

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8216;8216;The Curta came to me from my father Shyamsunder Khemka,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;After reading the Reader8217;s Digest piece on the painful history behind the making of this machine, now, it has suddenly become very important for me,8217;8217; he adds.

Stoll8217;s absorbing story narrates how Curta became an instrument literally of safety for Herzstark, a Jew, when the German managing engineer of the infamous Pankraz prison in Austria learnt of his attempt to develop a pocket calculator. He egged him on, saying if he succeeded, it would be given to Hitler as a present and he would get his freedom.

High on expectation, Herzstark worked overtime designing his dream machine. But before the Germans could free him, the Americans did.

But as Herzstark himself thought, but for the machine, he could have died miserably in prison. Three years later, the Prince of Liechtenstein set up the Contina company with Herzstark as the technical director, offering him 35 percent of the stock. As Stoll writes, 8216;8216;engineers used his wonderful machine to find satellite orbits, surveyors to keep track of transit positions and accountants to balance books down to the penny.8217;8217;