Road America: There is file after file drawer of old records at Road America
archives. I sense they are not well organized and there is no current plan for
anyone to go through this material, that I am aware.
Curta Calculators: I wanted a Curta Calculator in the 60s for my rallye
activity. However, I always felt that the calculator was out of my budget as I
think it was around $175 at the time. I was in Lichentstein in 1973, but I
couldnt find the Crown Prince, to buy one.
Since then, I think has found something else to make money for the
Mini-Kingdom as the demand for mechanical calulators has gone down for some
reason. I
know that for awhile there were a lot of corporations with P.O. Box Box Numbers
with a Lichenstein address. Those tax loopholes may have been closed up in
recent history as I hear little about it.
> The subject of old vs. new lap times is intriguing, even recognizing that
> conditions have changed a lot. So far it seems that other than a few
> individual recollections there does not seem to be any source for the old
> lap times. i was hoping that Tom Schultz, the author of "Road America", a
> year-by-year history, might have some records. No luck. I guess everybody
> in that era, myself included, just didn't think old info had any value.
> Come to think of it, Vintage Sports Car Racing hadn't yet been
> invented...........in fact, the only timing and scoring sheets we got were
> a couple of hours late and weren't passed out freely because photo copy
> machines had not yet been invented.
>
> Ditto electronic timing, of course, which brings up another subject.
> Anybody out there remember the Curta calculator? It was a hand-held
> calculator that looked like a little pepper mill. It would add, subtract,
> multiply, divide, and do roots accurate to 11 figures. In the 60's anybody
> who wanted to win rallies used one. The latest issue of Scientific American
> has a delightful article on it. I learned from the article that this
> calculator was invented by a Curt Herzstark while he was incarcerated in a
> Nazi concentration camp. Inventing it saved his life. He sketched it out on
> small scraps of paper and after the war he interested the Crown Prince of
> Lichtenstein in manufacturing it there.
>
> Remember, you first heard it first right here on the FOT list.
>
> uncle jack
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