Jaap Scherphuis
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jaapsch.net
Jaap Scherphuis
@jaapsch.net
Mathematician, likes mechanical calculators, twisty puzzles, the Psion II, and tiling patterns. See https://www.jaapsch.net
Here you go. It was a properly produced thing, but I don’t know by whom. Here it is on a piece of A4 paper. It was just transparent enough to pencil trace over pictures, and the pencil could be washed off. As you can see, I was into maps.
November 12, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Somewhere I probably still have a plastic overlay sheet for making Sinclair ZX81 graphics. It was semi transparent, and had a 24x32 grid for characters, each subdivided in 2x2. It allowed you to pixelize any picture for the machine. It was still useful when I had a Spectrum for making sprites.
November 12, 2025 at 11:50 AM
For me it is mostly that Bond film with the Faberge eggs
November 3, 2025 at 6:50 AM
Thanks for the scan. Burt Harrison & Co provided learning materials for schools and home schooling, but I don't know how this reissue came to be.

archive.org/details/find...
October 23, 2025 at 6:29 PM
There seems to be no trace of this machine to be found anywhere on the internet, except for its patent:
worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/searc...
worldwide.espacenet.com
October 22, 2025 at 8:55 PM
I'm not sure. I suppose they were novelty giveaways at office fairs and such. I've even seen a large one for sale, standing two or three feet high, which must have been used as a shop display.
September 28, 2025 at 6:38 PM
@chrisstaecker.bsky.social It even came in the *original* box.
September 28, 2025 at 4:04 PM
The instruction manual for the Facit NTK mechanical calculator included many pictures of the Facit Wizard.
September 28, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Maybe I'll be lucky and be the only bidder...
But seriously, that thing is valued at 500 times my whole collection, but does not function as well as a 5 dollar plastic one
September 25, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Neat. Another tape measure that I like is one with markings in Pi*cm, with which you can easily measure the diameter of a tree or any other round object you can wrap it around
September 24, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Yep. A relatively simple mechanism that could be made cheaply, so they were somewhat affordable - cost about the equivalent of an iPad
September 21, 2025 at 9:19 PM
I can’t think of the right negations of words like admire and respect that don’t trivialise the impact that horrible man has
September 19, 2025 at 6:07 AM
The song reminds me a bit of Monty Python’s Lumberjack song
September 18, 2025 at 5:23 PM
LLL is how I first learned who Spiro Agnew was.
September 10, 2025 at 5:21 AM
I’m not sure that’s going to do much
September 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
I collect mechanical calculators and would love to have one of those Hannoveras with the little owl. If I’m not mistaken, the owl’s eyes change colour to red when you do a subtraction.
September 7, 2025 at 9:21 PM
I go to flea markets and car boot sales almost every week, but this wealth of machines is very unusual. The three photos were taken at three different stands.
September 7, 2025 at 3:25 PM