Free Republic

Slides Rule At a gathering of the Oughtred Society, the reckoning may be dead or logarithmic, but the conversation is always right on the mark BY SILKE TUDOR To those born after 1970, the thought of sending someone into space with a slide rule seems ridiculous, but, to early Apollo crews, the mere thought of going up without one would have been a good enough reason to scrub a launch. Slide rules (the Pickett N600-ES Dual Base Log/Log to be precise) were compulsory equipment during our first five trips to the moon; in fact, Neil Armstrong probably determined the distance...

My HP-48SX ceased functioning about 5 years ago and i still miss it. I recently got the bug to go out and replace it with something. I saw an HP-50 on sale today for about 60 bucks. I bought the 48-SX when they first came out(circa 1989?) for A LOT OF MONEY. I forget the exact amount, but it was either $199.99 or $299.99. I think it was the latter. The only thing wrong with my 48 is the on/off button. I know this because the problem started out minor and gradually got worse. I used to be able to...

My recent post (my other car is a cdr) brought forth the best of the high-functioning geeks that inhabit this here space. Since the thread veered off (as they always tend to do) into general computer language humor, mostly dealing with Lisp, I got to thinking about RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) and the Hewlett-Packard calculators that were popular in my post-college days working in IT around 1971 or so.Are there other FReepers that still like RPN over infix notation for math? My trusty old H-P has long since departed (wish I still had it) but I've found RpCalc to be...