Mechanical Calculator 2015

Mechanical calculators were in use well into the 1970s (or 1990s in Wales). They reached their pinnacle of refinement in the Curta calculator - a little mechanical pepperpot which would crank out the answers as you cranked its handle. If you have never seen a Curta, _don't_ Google it, because when you see it you will want one, and they are expensive.

Howevertheless, even the Curta had a limited range of mathematical operations, because only so many gears, cams, pinions and pillets could be packed into a handy size.

Ultimately, electronic calculators took over from mechanical ones, because electronic miniaturisation gave them ever more capabilities and made them ever cheaper.

Well, according to my (mechanical) watch, it is now well into the 21st century. Electronics have progressed a lot, but mechanical engineering has advanced also. In particular, we now have the technology to produce the most minuscule mechanical components by techniques such as photolithography. It is perfectly possible, for instance, to make gear trains on a micron scale, assembled and ready to run.

It should, therefore, be possible to resume the development of the mechanical calculator. A device with a few hundred moving parts would be capable of some fairly complex calculations. If the same modular approach to design were employed in mechanical calculators as in electronic chips, it should even be possible to make devices with many thousands of intermeshing gears.

The time has come, therefore, to produce the world's first mechanical scientific calculator, capable of full trignometric, statistical and other functions.

Naturally, the human interfaces would be similar to those on the older generation of mechanical calculators - sliders or punch-buttons for input, and elegantly engraved brass or ivory wheels for the output. "Pi to the power of root 10? Sure, let me just crank that one out here..."