Calcorex 403
This is one of my most recent acquisitions, N° 03438, from a second-hand website in Kroatia. I translated every email that was exchanged into or from Kroatian with the help of Google translate. I have no idea what terrible things I may have written to the seller in this way, but in the end it must have been allright, as the machine did show up on my doorstep. The machine is really an end-of-the-seventies icon, from the TRS factory in Zagreb, and I think it was the last pinwheel calculator to be designed. I totally love the design. There was an era in calculator design which does absolutely not appeal to me, from the late 40s to the late 60's, but this machine is so brutally honest, a true dinosaur screaming in orange "Buy me, I'm modern!", that I simply had to have it in the collection. It superficially resembles the last Odhner models, only it is even more radical in its shapes for buttons, knobs ad handles. I scrounged ebay literally for years after seeing one sold for a very small amount of money. The next one that showed up three or four years later sold for over 250EUR, and I had not bid as much. A few evenings of searching on the net after the "must-have-,-now!-virus" struck, turned up this little jewel in Kroatia, which I bought for a lot less. They really are to be had in ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary, ...Of course a few weeks after another identical machine showed up on ebay, which ended up selling for even less. Ah well ...
