Hello, Does any one else here use / collect slide rules?

 

I love slide rules try and use it all the time!!

 

Right on ! I have several and enjoy them immensely! Even have one on my watch that I EDC.

 

Yes, I still have my collection, but I seldom use them.

 

I have mine in a case on the office wall, "In case of calculator failure, break Glass!"

 

I use to mine mine to explain why some older devices that we still use every day are amazing but not perfect. To build large, complicated, precision devices moving in 3-dimensional space under amazing conditions that were designed without 3D cad files and finite element analysis with huge databases of material properties and controlled by motors and switch gear that was built as the device was built (no prior chance for testing of motor power, inertia and control accuracy) - just calculations with a slide rule, drawing with pencils, straightedges and compasses,, ellipse templates and French curves. One place I worked had a full drawer of all the design tools, notebooks of calculations and all the drawings. All the major pieces were designed and built from the 1930's to 1960's. Everything from weaving machines (looms) to steam power plant and knitting machines and printing/packaging machines. I have only respect for the people who built the stuff with the tools and brute force they had in the day.

 

I still have the ones I used in school and one I picked up on eBay. I rarely use them, have no plans to ever get rid of them, and have no plans to acquire more.

 

Slide rules are great collection pieces! My favorite is attached, Pickett Model N 3-ES (12" X 2 1/4")

 

https://deadreckonings.com/2008/01/09/the-art-of-nomography-i-geometric-design/

There were several types of specialized 'slide' (circular nomographs) rules like these.

 

Hello, Does any one else here use / collect slide rules?

I have a few of my own. Why do you ask?

 

They were great in those days of engineering with 2 decimal places. I've come across some of my teachers who could get answers in a jiffy with just a twirl of their slides!!!

 

I still have nightmares about showing up for a physics exam without my sliderule.

(or something like that)

Bob

 

Using a slide rule taught us how to keep track of the decimal point. I couldn't believe the number of times my classmates in physics wrote down the wrong answer, to way too many decimal places, because they were too dependent on the calculator. They didn't check their work and it couldn't catch their mistakes.

 

Using a slide rule taught us how to keep track of the decimal point. I couldn't believe the number of times my classmates in physics wrote down the wrong answer, to way too many decimal places, because they were too dependent on the calculator. They didn't check their work and it couldn't catch their mistakes.

I recall, at the time I was the happy young Captain of a boat dedicated to hydro graphic surveys, watching an hydraulic engineer standing, leaning on a drawing board, running a long calculation using his slide rule at an incredible fast pace. I was surprised to see him jotting down on a small notepad, from time to time, some zeroes and commas but not other figures.

When asked, he told me it was the way to keep "la marcha del cálculo" what I believe you translate as "the progress of the calculation" or simply "tracking the decimal point" (comma for us). He was little older than me but evidently knowing what he was doing.

 

I have several. Both 6" and 12" rules along with a few circular pocket rules. Mine in college was a K&E Log Log Duplex Deci-Lon plastic rule. By then the bamboo faced with engraved plastic veneers was no longer made but I have a couple of them. Lot's of the guys in my class had the bright yellow aluminum Pickett rules and I hated those things. They always look too garish for my taste. My dad was both a mechanical and marine engineer and never went anywhere without his 6" pocket rule. Even to church or out to eat he had it ready to use. He also carried a pocket notebook to scribble in as he was doing long calculations. When he finally sat for his PE License in the 70s he was the only guy taking the exam still using a slide-rule even though he had finally bought a TI SR-51 calculator. Lost Art. I went into the Georgia Tech Bookstore when my daughter was there and they had some cheap plastic 12" rules. The guy behind the counter said they only carried them as a nostalgia item for old farts like me coming back to campus many years later.

 

Hello everyone
Slide rule?
Is that a cross between a veneer caliper and a sextant?

 

Hello everyone
Slide rule?
Is that a cross between a veneer caliper and a sextant?

As a rule, Yes !

 

https://pilotshq.com/products/e6-b-flight-computer-asa-e6b

 

As a rule, Yes !

I don't know? Your rules are precisely graduated.