How the sounds of a calculator ended up on Sublime's website

You'd think it's boring but it's sorta cool and kinda wild how it's about everything but also nothing anyways here it is

This mechanical calculator was supposed to be a gift for Hitler. 

And that’s the least interesting thing about it.

The sounds that the calculator makes – crisp, decisive, mechanical sounds – we recorded them and used them as clicks on our website. You can hear them below:

What’s all this have to do with Sublime?
Nothing. And also everything.

1930s

It’s hard to say when the story starts.

But let’s say it begins here, with an Austrian engineer named Curt Herzstark.

Calculators at this point are huge, like the size of a cash register huge. All anyone wants is a pocket-sized tiny calculator, but no one knows how to make one. Less than 100 years ago and no one in the entire world has a calculator that fits into their pocket. 

So Curt decides that rather than looking forward in time for a solution, he’ll imagine himself into a future where the calculator’s already invented, and he’ll look backwards:

I thought to myself, I'll pretend that I have already invented everything. What does this kind of machine really have to look like, so that someone could use it?

By 1938 he has a patent. 

Then WWII begins.

Curt is sent to a concentration camp. The SS officers find out he’s got plans for a revolutionary calculator and tell him to finish making it, that it’ll be a gift for Hitler once the Germans win the war.

Hitler never got the calculator.

1949

The Curta goes on sale for $125 USD ($1,647 today).

It’s a hit with engineers, traveling accountants, pilots, even rally drivers. For twenty years the Curta sells – 150k units in total – and then everything stops.

Simpler, cheaper, easier to reproduce, the electric calculator takes over.

And just like that, the Curta was dead.

Until it wasn’t.

2022

The Curta becomes a collector’s item and now sells on eBay for $1-2k. 

That’s how the artist Shl0ms buys one. He tweets about the whole story.

Which is how a man named Gabriel Nessim Schloser in Madrid, España sees that tweet.

Gabriel, who is building Sublime, is moved. Gabriel’s great-grandparents survived the holocaust, and he thought Curt delayed the design on purpose until the war ended to save his life.

Maybe Curt did.

Gabriel goes on eBay to get one, but they’re all too expensive.

Except for one.

Owned by a guy from Turkey who’d just come into the possession of things gifted to him by his old lady neighbor, recently deceased.

Including a Curta calculator.

The guy wants 800€ for it.

Gabriel and the dude get on the phone and haggle for 45 min. Sending each other photos of IDs to prove they're good for it. But they couldn’t know for sure.

So Gabriel ends up wiring 600€.
And he waits.
And waits.
And the Curta arrives.

2023

Gabriel is working on Sublime's first website.
Designing it.
Making sure it feels real.
Immersive.

And as he’s looking at the designs, he’s playing with the calculator. Fidgeting.
TAK
He looks at the screen.
TAK CLAK
The screen looks at him.
TAK CLAK TRRRRAK

And he thinks –
What if we use this TAK sound on the website?
And in doing so, honor Curt’s memory in some absurd way.

A few weeks later

Gabriel’s at one of his local bars. It feels like an old lady's house.

There's a bartender there, a friend – Sofi. 
She likes Gabriel. She even invented a drink in his name, St. Gabriel.
A whiskey spice experimental blend thing.

And Gabriel tells her about all this.
And she says, “my boyfriend is a sound engineer.”

They rent a studio. 
A real studio where people record music. 
And they record the crisp, decisive, mechanical sounds.

Gabriel plays the sounds for his mom. She lays down on the bed, closes her eyes, and listens to each two minute recording. Over thirty recordings in total.

Over and over.
KAK. TAK. CLAK. TRRRRAK.
Until she goes… “THAT ONE!”
Rotula Resorte 2_01_clean.wav, 0:22 - 0:23.

And that was the end of the story. 

Until it wasn’t.

2024

The sounds of the Curta still live on our website sublime.app.

A few weeks ago

Kristoffer

from

Naive Weekly

asks Sublime if we want to run an ad in his Internet Phone Book. 

Gabriel and I meet and discuss what it could be, and somehow the Curta sounds come up. 

And Gabriel tells me the story. 
And I say whoa.

And the sounds of the calculator born backwards in the mind of Curt Herzstack in 1930s Austria and almost given as a gift to Hitler, those crisp, decisive, mechanical sounds made by the only pocket-sized calculator people could use for about twenty years, those sounds traveled.

Those sounds traveled through the story told by Shl0ms.
And received by Gabriel.
And recorded by Sofi’s boyfriend.
And chosen by Gabriel's mom.
And added to Sublime’s website.
And shared now by me.
To you.

Those sounds traveled through us all, dancing and jiving and boogieing their way into our minds, hearts, and souls, sublime as they are.

~

A closing note

Do ideas have agency?
Do they crave to be shared?
To be reproduced, like humans? 

And if ideas have agency, do stories? 
Do we tell stories, or do stories tell us? 
Do we make sounds, or do sounds make us?

Does it matter?
Probably not.

Either way, our job is simply to listen.

And in listening, pay attention, be present, and perhaps create something wonderful.