"Simulated Pickett N4-ES Slide Rule". (For all you egg heads.)

AntiQuark ^ | Feb 6, 2005 | Derek

[Islander7]

Following up on my original post, I've scanned and virtualized my Pickett N4-ES Vector Type LOG LOG DUAL BASE SPEED RULE. That's the most complicated rule that Picket produced. It has 34 scales, which is good, because in the world of slide rule collecting, bigger is better. ().

[potlatch]

Your dad had an interesting history. My dad was a Chemical Engineer and I had one of his slide rulers. It was a short one with a suede leather pouch. I ended up giving it to my youngest brother - who is also a Chemical Engineer.

[doorgunner69]

Meh. still have my old K&E Duplex Decitrig here, though I am far too rusty to do much like I used to.

Like others have said, I resisted calculators until the first chemistry test where all the calculator users were done and I was still whizzing away on the sliderule. I saw the light and never looked back.

[Fester Chugabrew]

pingus!

[yarddog]

Back around 1966 I took a class on slide rule. I recall the instructor had a huge one on the wall above the chalk board. I had a cheap plastic one then later got another a much more expensive tho still plastic one. I probably still have them somewhere.

A few months ago I found the first calculator I ever bought. It was a Sears (electronic slide rule). This would have been around 1973. I have at least a dozen high end calculators which use LCD display, and they will run for a very long time before the batteries go dead.

The old Sears one uses 4 AA batteries but it has a beautiful green display. I had quit using it because it ran through batteries fairly quickly. Now it is the only one I use as about the only use it gets is to balance my checkbook and it will run for months just doing that.

40 years old and it still works perfectly.

[NTHockey]

>>Hemmi 259D (the rule I used in school)<<

My was a Hemmi 257 ChE slide rule. I had to get permission to use it on tests. Instead of log scales on back, it had atomic weights & numbers, pressure conversions and temperature conversions.

[NTHockey]

>>Hemmi 259D (the rule I used in school)<<

Mine was a Hemmi 257 ChE slide rule. I had to get permission to use it on tests. Instead of log scales on back, it had atomic weights & numbers, pressure conversions and temperature conversions. I still have it in a leather case. It also has a magnifier to read thre and four places.

[al baby]

Like

[imardmd1]

50/6.5 = 7.7(-0.0076923) or thereabout.

What the Pickett leads to in engineering and science is quick and critical thinking, not simply quasi-precise numbers.

[llevrok]

When I was in college (grad.1972), the business dept got an “electronic” calculator. Cost $400. All it could do was add/subtract/multiply/divide AND square roots. Heaven!

The real kicker was that only grad students and faculty were allowed to use it.

[reed13k]

I picked up a k&e log log duplex in the original box with the books for a song at a yard sale I’ve been teaching myself as they were gone by the time I arrived it was all ts35s. Beautiful instrument. I told the wife to buy any she finds when she’s out yardsaling

[Sequoyah101]

My Dad taught slide rule at University. I could use the big one when I was about 4. It was huge and on a cart rolling frame so you could turn it over to show the class both sides without turning the cart.

I started university with a slide rule but you just could not keep up in class against the new TI55 and HP21.

Dad could beat just about any calculator and get awfully close to the same answer. Of course he also did Trachtenberg math and could work most problems in his head.

[Islander7]

I didn’t make it. Stumbled across it on the net.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

I never cared much for Picket or K&E slide rules, they always felt "gritty" when you manipulated the slide and cursor. Most of my ME colleagues used 10" Post Versalog slide rules as did I. K&E and Picket were made of aluminum whereas Post used laminated bamboo. The bamboo had natural oils which made manipulating the slide as smooth as silk. I carried 5" and 10" Versalog slide rules until I bought an HP 45 calculator. I still keep both around. They do something the calculators don't and that is they don't conceal answers with 15 digits of false precision. Slide rules force you to put your data in "standard form" and cause you to think about the precision of your input. If you are working with data that is known to +/- 10% accuracy there is no point in calculating to 15 digit accuracy as your answer will be no better then +/- 10%.

They used to teach courses in "estimating", I suspect that is no longer true.

Regards,
GtG

PS There was one guy in my nomography and empirical equations class who had a 15 cycle circular slide rule. It had C & D scales in a circular track surrounding a spiral set of scales they were effectively some 20 feet long. The outer pair could calculate to five significant digits which you used to find which cycle to read on the inward spiral. There is always somebody like that in every math course!

[PUGACHEV]

My dad, who was a civil engineer, got an award from the Navy Department for inventing a type of circular slide rule for some sort of task the Navy had.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I bought a Dietzgen slide rule for $20 from the school store. I always regretted not spending the extra $10 it would have cost for a Post - but then, in my defense I did ask what was better about the Post. But it was foolish of me to ask a clerk in a school store (who in retrospect probably could not even multiply with a slide rule) instead of asking someone who actually used a Post slide rule.

My brother, who’s severely physically handicapped, used a circular slide rule. It had a pair of radial indicator lines whose angle represented the ratio between the two numbers to which the two were set. I really never learned how to use it . . .

[publius911]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Islander7.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Islander7.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Islander7. An ‘extra, extra’ to APoD members.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Islander7. An ‘extra, extra’ to APoD members.