Slide Rules....Anyone remember them?

[AlexS]

But if I'm doing a really nice circular table I go a bit futher and use......


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6711136990 8658516398 3150197016 5151168517 1437657618
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I guess rough enough is good enough.

Javali, that's a nice collection. I have a Castell from school and a circular one that I bought before an exam at tech when I'd forgotten the Castell.

Used to astound the youngsters at work & uni with the circular one, doing calcs while they were being booked and finishing before them.

They do teach you to ensure the order of magnitude is reasonable.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

I guess rough enough is good enough.

Now, if only we could convince him to use millimetres instead of cubits, he could get away with dropping a few decimal places.

Javali, that's a nice collection. I have a Castell from school and a circular one that I bought before an exam at tech when I'd forgotten the Castell.

I'd forgotten about the round ones... I had a 6"er that came with one of my Time-Life subscriptions. 'Twas a fun little gadget, bit hard to put in the pocket though.

I wonder who ended up pinching it?

[dmolh]

I remember them well, I recently found one in a "random" lot I picked up at an auction.

I also remeber having a circular (drum shaped) slide rule that from memory was about 10 times more accurate (ie 3 or 4 decimal places) than the standard straight rules.

I was the first in my High School to use THE CALCULATOR that the school had purchased - it took 4 AA batterys every other day, and was good for 8 red LED segment digits. From memory the school paid approx $400 for the calculator and it must have been approx 1976.

[Ashore]

Have to agree with you alex on the circular units , only have an old hemmi 251 left now though, and still play with it occasionally , though these days it takes longer each time to remember how to drive it

[Felder]

Ahhh yes.

But can you punch in 55378008 on a slide rule, turn it upside down and giggle like a school girl?

[bennylaird]

55318008?????:confused:

[Driver]

YA BASTARDS!!!!!!

Why did you have to go and bring up all this ancient old crap? Now I'm not going to be able to rest until I've found my bloody slide rule and my truly ancient paperback set of log tables (circa 1958) which I've had since Form 1 at grammar school.

I know they're somewhere in the house. :confused:

And now I'll have to find the bloody things!

YA BASTARDS!!!!!!!:mad:

[Felder]

55318008?????:confused:

Either 5318008 or 55378008 works, depending on the size of the chesticles.

Not your suggestion.

[rrich]

The calculator causes the greatest loss of reasoning in todays students. On a slide rule we would multiply 2 times 2 and get approximately 4. (3.98 to 4.02, but who's counting?) We had a feel for what the calculation should be. We knew when the numbers just weren't right and would go back to check our work to find the mistake.

Today the numbers ore results produced by a calculator or computer are accepted as fact when in many cases they aren't. My sons (both mid 30s)have difficulty KNOWING if their calculations are accurate, close or on another planet. It is a pitty that they never learned how to use a slide rule.

As for using a slide rule, I have a small six inch Pickett that I use frequently. It's only to calculate fuel mileage in the pick up truck. And, recently I had to make a new hairline cursor for the slide rule as the old one just deteriorated. (I've also got the electrical engineers model Pickett but a twelve inches, it's not too convenient to carry in the truck.)

The really funny thing about knowing how to use a slide rule is that my wife will not allow me to go grocery shopping with her. I'll keep a mental total of the things she is purchasing. As we check out, I'll tell her the approximate cost of everything. Adding plus tax and recycle values. I'm usually accurate to within a half of a dollar and she really gets pi$$ed off.

Do any of you old methane gas clouds remember the cartoon of the student trying to divide infinity by zero on a slide rule?

[Auld Bassoon]

Gotta disagree with part of this. They're only as accurate as the numbers punched in. All too often I've read an answer back from a calculator and the ol' grey matter has jumped in saying "that's not right!" because I always run a mental guesstimate first.

I must agree here - I always apply the "does this look right" test as well.

Using a slide rule brings back mixed memories: Satisfaction when I got things right (mostly), and pain (when wrapped over the knuckles at school for making a monkey's uncle out of the calculation).

Then again, using a sextant and declination tables isn't all that different, even if fixing the horizon in a F8 was a tad trying, especially when closing on a lee shore :eek: Ready reckoning to the rescue

[Iain]

My slide rule doesn't work any more, the numbers are blurry.
Still remember the Austins logs and antilogs though.

[graemet]

I used my Hemmi Darmsdardt all through uni, usually got the numbers right, usually got the decimal in the wrong place unless I did the mental ballpark first. The first calculators came out a few years after graduation and a week's pay bought me one that would add, subtract, multiply & divide as long as you didn't want more than 6 decimals. No squares or trig values. Now they give em away with a notepad at seminars!!!
And we lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road and worked 26 hours a day, eight days every week.
Cheers
Graeme

[Groggy]

I used a slide rule for work up until 1987 when I changed jobs. There was no faster or simpler way to calculate aircraft weight and balance on the fly (pardon the pun).

I keep my fathers A.W.Faber Addiator Darmstadt in my drawer with my old slide rule. No idea why, just cos I can I guess.

[China]

Sure can remember them after reading this tread I rummaged through the draw and pulled out the old Aristo only one problem can't for the life of me rememeber how to use it

[woodsprite]

Strewth! I only asked if anyone remembered them! But glad to read all these great posts and even more gladder to hear folk still use the critters. Javali, love your collection - does having so many mean you can use all of them to resolve an equation to umpteen decimal places? You know, use them in series?

Now the talk of logs and ant-logs has got me going - i know I have my very log book from Tech School - remember Technical Schools? or is that going to start a new thread - somewhere. Will have to dig it out, and then remember what to do with it!

A great read
Jeff