Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/12/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Good Lord, a slide rule thread! My high school in Brooklyn had 9- or 10-footers over the blackboard in every classroom. They were removed a dozen or more years ago as obsolete and put into storage. Our alumni association has been auctioning them off at yearly reunions for quite a while now so they must be gone. I'm surprised to hear they are rare. I wonder what one does with a 10-foot slide rule. Hang in in your living room, maybe? Most everyone I knew used K&Es but I was a big fan of the Picketts - still own three of them - though the oxidation on the slides sure left your hands dirty after a long homework session. Have one six-inch K&E, too. (Why so many? It's sort of like collecting Leica lenses, right?) I used them for years until the HP35 calculator was introduced -at $435.00 in 1972 dollars. Mine are all seriously shopworn. Like a lot of older technologies they were nice to use because you could easily understand the underlying principle of operation. We used to say engineering was a three-digit world, exactly the resolution of the slide rule. Now, it's commonly a five or six digit world with many calculations many, many digits more. >Speaking of slide rules, which of course, we were not really doing... > >MIT has the old K+E collection of slide rules. I wonder if BD or someone >else knows if they are available on display? > >Apparently there are some really weird ones..... > >I found the article in my father's copy of the MIT Alumni journal. >Apparently the "curator" thought that the really large, around 6 foot, slide >rule for teaching was really rare.... She looked around 30 years old. > >How many of us in our 50's or 40's were put through slide rule learning >using one of these old timers? >How many of us still remember how to use a slide rule? >How many of us still OWN a slide rule? >How many of us still USE a slide rule? > >Old Timers........Youngsters....... and Slide rules.... > >Frank Filippone >red735i@earthlink.net > > > > Yes I know that there are a handful of so-called >"classic" computer collectors, like slide rule collectors. > > > >_______________________________________________ >Leica Users Group. >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information -- Regards, Dick Boston MA