Look, it's obvious that slide-rules can't work in zero-gravity environments. With no gravity, the slide will come out and just float away!

On the serious side, I'm old enuff to have actually owned and used one! In the mid-50s, all us geek guys had one. We got one hour of tutorial on using it in Physics 1, and the booklet that came with mine had the basics. I was proud as punch the first day I went off to school with that beauty in its leather (NO VINYL!) scabbard on my belt. It was a Kauffel and Esser (SP?), made of magnesium alloy. I used it through my undergraduate years. Wish I still had it, but it vanished sometime after one of my post-grad school moves.

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Standing on the shoulders of giants...

Keuffel & Esser. Mine was a 10" Log Log Duplex Decitrig that belonged to my dad. Wood & plastic overlay that felt like ivory, detachable magnifier, hard-fitted leather holster. Moved like silk.

If you ever run into the b*****d who stole it from under my desk during my frosh physics final, please feel free to find a sensitive part on him and break it.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Hey, I still have one: K&E model N4081-3, including the leather case. But mine doesn't have a detachable magnifier (maybe it once did?). My father used it in college, then I used it when my turn came. The white plastic is badly yellowed.

If it ever had a magnifier the case would have a bulge at the top end to accomodate it.

Jokes aside for a moment, a high-quality slide rule is one of the most esthetically pleasing devices ever made.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

In that case it never had the magnifier. I didn't think anything was missing.

You know, every time I see the title of this thread, it just makes me want to sing:
And then I saw the Face,
now I'm a Hoax Believer!

Might be more fitting for the Martian/Hoaxland HBs, though.

P.S. I miss my stolen slide rules too.

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GhiaPet Home Page

And aesthetic value is all many slide rules have left. Slide rule collecting is a significant hobby, even among those who learned to use them after the electronic revolution. The helical rules are some of the most ingenious. Consider also those made from excessively exotic materials to resist undue thermal expansion.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I want one of those classroom demonstrators that were about six feet long.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I love those circular slide rules in flight computers. They have no limits to their use as long as you can do order of magnitude calculations in your head.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

That's what my highschool physics teacher used to teach us the basic operations. I wonder how many of those big boys survived to become collectibles?

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Standing on the shoulders of giants...

http://northshore.shore.net/~jim/wpicpge26-01.html


4' for sale
http://members.aol.com/slideruleemp/ (scroll down)

Lots of places online that sell or trade slide rules and such. Google search got me lots of hits.

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Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

I used to have one in my office that was mounted in a large picture frame. The framed rule was hung on the wall. Below it there was a sign that read, "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS".

8-[

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Supposedly some large IBM mainframe came with such a feature, though I don't know if that's really true or just an urban legend. (Doesn't seem as if IBM would have the sense of humor for that.)

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

The slide rules remind me of my spouse's college roommate, a probable genius who flew through a civil engineering program plus masters degree in about 4 years and a semester. One day he came back from a weekend at home sporting his new calculator.!!!!!! First one I'd seen. It could add, subract, divide and multiply, and perform a few other not-too-involved calculations. His dad had bought it for him. Cost $400 American. We were all in awe of his high-teck gizmo. It was bigger than the ones they mail you for free today when you open a new checking account, but couldn't do nearly as much.

When I took a biostatistics course, we used mechanical calculators. They looked a bit like a typewriter on steroids. Within them they had dozens of machined shafts, levers and wheels. When they were commanded to do a calculation, they would spin, clunk and jump for 15 seconds, 1/2 minute, or more, before presenting the answer. When pocket electronic calculators became available, I thought they were the greatest wonder of the age. I still do!

Away back when I drove a truck, I needed something to help me calc'ing times for my logbook and other things...so I bought a calculator. 1977. Still got it. Still got the receipt from the Union 76 truck stop in Oak Park IL outside of Chicago...

A standard LCD four-function calculator, that runs on 3 button batteries. The kind of calculator you can get now in a blister pack at the register, usually 2 for $5...

Price?

$36.77...

Like I said, still got the receipt...

True story.

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.