Slide Rules

[raymac46]

Did you use a slide rule growing up? Do you like playing around with them? Here is a site that gives Javascript emulations of a whole bunch of different models and makers. You can use the one Buzz Aldren took to the moon if you want.

 

https://www.sliderules.org/

[raymac46]

As a student I had a Pickett N4-ES slide rule. The closest model to that in the article is the Pickett X-4.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I still have my ol' Post slide rule around here in some drawer or box.

 

Very similar to this one...

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I would have to get my super-strong specs out to see those wee little numbers and lines these days.

[raymac46]

A precision instrument that I was pretty skilled in using and quite proud of, and it's all gone the way of the dodo. At least I learned about log and trig scales and the math behind them.

In fact, I spent most of my life working in 3 figure accuracy. Our product formulas were weighed and written that way - a package of Jell-O was 56.7 grams.

Of course the formula had to be transformed to a four decimal place percentage setup for costing. That was a mathematical construct that had no basis in reality but was needed for the bean counters. In my earliest days the only sane way to so that was with a mechanical calculator, since a slide rule wouldn't cut it. The lab had a Friden calculator that chugged away like a locomotive but got the job done eventually.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Sadly, as with languages, if you don't use it, you lose it. I was never a slide rule expert by a long shot, particularly since I was part of that transitional generation of school kids who may have started out with the slide rule, but soon had access to that spiffy new technology, the electronic calculator. Those were the daze!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I have to laugh when I think back to those days when all the geeky types with their plastic pen holders and masking tape holding their glasses together also had that leather slide rule holster on their belts and banging against their spindly little legs as the tried to get to Chemistry class before the tardy bell rang.

[raymac46]

I didn't wear glasses but the rest is accurate enough. 

I was solidly log tables and slide rules, then punch cards on a mainframe, time sharing in BASIC, finally calculators and at last personal computers. What a long strange trip it's been...

Edited June 4, 2022 by raymac46

[V.T. Eric Layton]

2 hours ago, raymac46 said:

What a long strange trip it's been...

 

Indeed, in many respects.

[abarbarian]

Never used a slide rule but did use log tables in maths classes at school, no idea why as I never used them in real life.

 

We did have a slide rule. "try not to crash land on yer bum whilst sliding"

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by abarbarian

[raymac46]

I used log tables until I got a slide rule and once I needed to use seven place log tables in a spectroscopy lab. In a way log tables were obsoleted by the slide rule which in turn was displaced by the computer program, calculator, spreadsheet...

[crp]

i still have yet to grasp logarithms.

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Life's too short to be concerned about it.

[raymac46]

Logarithms were a part of being a chemist. Everything from pH to learning about statistical mechanics and kinetics required logarithms. As a senior I may soon need logs to deal with the price of coffee.