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Re: lap times

To: vinttr4@geneseo.net, fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: lap times
From: N197TR4@cs.com
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 18:07:17 EST
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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