Posted on 08/31/2004 10:04:24 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Robert Miles, a retired Purdue University civil engineering professor and a Purdue alumnus, left, and James Alleman, a current Purdue civil engineering professor, hold a 7-foot-long slide rule in front of an exhibit they created that contains about 200 of the pre-digital computational devices. The permanent exhibit is on display in the university’s Potter Engineering Center and includes slide rules from astronauts Neil Armstrong and Jerry Ross. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)
A little off-subject, but the fact that Bill Nelson got to ride in the shuttle pisses me off. He's just a dumb lawyer who only got the ride because he was a congressman, and now goes around acting like he was an astronaut who decided to run for public office.
Fast, accurate, good enough for engineering purposes, and right here on the desk--The K&E Deci-Lon
"You know, you used to be real cool when you had strapped on your leather slide rule carrier to your belt..."
Yah, right! It was called "The mark of the geek" when I started college in 1963 as an electronics engineering major.
I still have the slide rule and its leather case, though. Darned if I can remember how to use it now. Oh well. I never became an engineer anyhow.
Only EE's strapped them to their belts.
Real engineers crammed them upside down in a hip pocket.
Yeah, that and the pocket protector with 4 colors of ball-point pen. Real cool.
Those were the days.... :)
The hottest slide rule was made by Pickett. My family was on a limited budget so I had a plastic Sterling when IO was in high school.
The skill was in how you could do a series of operations without jotting down an intermediate result (equivalent to a memory in a calculator). We learned to do algebraic manipulations in our heads so we could do it all in one smooth seemless operation.
Boiler bump!
I wish I still had my old "slip stick". I lost it during a move some years ago.
Next week, I'll show him how we built the Pyramids....
"I wish I still had my old "slip stick". I lost it during a move some years ago."
If you remember the make and model of the thing, you can find one on eBay, and for little money. It won't be yours, but it'll be the same.
Mine was a Pickett aluminum log-log rule. Very nice.
I've still got mine. An A. W. Faber-Castell, made in Germany.
I treasure my late grandfather's slide rule, a fine Keuffel and Esser with leather holster. He was a mining engineer, who worked in the dredging operations in the Panama Canal.
Although "electronic" E6-B's do much more than the circular slide rule version, I vividly remember getting embarrassed one cold January day when the electronic version failed on a check ride.
The slide rule works even when batteries fail.
Thanks. I never thought about that. Good idea.
I confess that I'm old enough to have been a sliderule guy
in college.
By way of curiosity, would anyone know when the last sliderule was manufactured?
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