zlacker

Anyone else use a slide rule in school?

I have tried to explain it to my wife, but she can't grok it. I'm going to have to buy one from fleaBay to get her to understand.

>>reaper+(OP)
Yep. I didn't have a calculator until college.

There are online virtual slide rules like http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-e...

The key concept is understanding how logarithms work.

>>reaper+(OP)
Never used it myself. I did engineering back 30 years ago and we learned in the engineering graphics course how to design nomographs which are similar to slide rules.

>>reaper+(OP)
Nope. Never even saw one used. I understand what it's FOR, but as a means of calculation they're obsolete.

When I entered the workforce and met engineers much older (say, born 10+ years before I was in 1970), they'd often have one in a desk drawer, but they weren't using them either.

>>ubermo+FC
The real inflection point was around 1975. A few years before that and there wasn't such a thing as a pocket calculator. A year earlier and a 5 function (the basics plus square root) was still $100 in 1974 currency. Then TI scientific calculators were around $200 or so. Within a couple of years even HPs were at around that price point.

In college (late 70s) I still took a slide rule to exams as a backup; LED calculators could run out of juice. But I never used it.

>>ubermo+FC
> I understand what [a slide rule is] FOR, but as a means of calculation they're obsolete.

As a pedagogical tool it is much superior. People who spend a few months using a slide rule come to a strong intuitive understanding of logarithms that no number of purely symbolic exercises with logs can ever match. Slide rules are also quite efficient tools for doing approximate calculations, much faster than pen and paper.

For anything too sophisticated for a slide rule to handle, students should use a general-purpose programming language and a full-sized keyboard.