A slip-stick wizard is something to behold.
I still used one in the early 1970s, because I was too cheap to spring for the TI handheld calculator.
“I still used one in the early 1970s, because I was too cheap to spring for the TI handheld calculator.”
It appears we attended college around the same time (1973-77 for me) with the transition from slide rules to the TI calculator. When I first started college, engineering majors were easy to identify with their long leather pouches suspended from their belt to carry their slide rule. A short time later, you could discern which engineering major had money because now the belt holster was one for a TI calculator.
I believe that there’s too many more corporations, departments, and politicians to pay off to manage all that corruption in the time required to match the 1940s era acquisition time.
I used a slide rule in college until about 1975 when I got a TI calculator from my parents for Christmas. Still know where the old Pickett is, though nowadays I use the HP 15C that I bought in 1984. That 15C sold me on reverse Polish notation, but I don’t think any calculators with RPN are still being made.
I have walked around underneath the B-36 at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson. That’s a place well worth seeing, especially if you have a few days to spend there. Every cool plane you ever heard of, and then some.
I did my BS & MS in engineering with slide rule, and when began working bought a TI electronic calculator for $250 (in mid 1960’s money probably $1500 in todays money) and it could do square roots!
Those slide rules were fun and ingenious. It forced me to know my math before making a calculation.