[Leica] Re Old Stuff

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

Hi Larry,

I have to admit to having an E-6B, a gift from one of the kids, shortly 
before I received two mechanical heart valves, and had to give up 
flying.  I never learned to manipulate it, though that brings to mind a 
cardboard circular from Exxon that I carried in my flight kit. My kids 
went off to college in the 70s, and I still have some TI and HP 
calculators in drawers behind me.  I have used an HP 32S for the last 25 
years and it is still doing fine by me.

I have also "killed" a few old cameras over the years, in search of 
knowledge of how they worked.  Packed away, I have everything from my 
father-in-law's wooden 8x10 studio camera to a Polaroid SX-70.

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA

On 11/3/2015 2:23 PM, Larry Zeitlin via LUG wrote:
>   Jim,
>       It is good to see that another old timer recognizes the wonders of 
> the slide rule. When you used a slide rule you had to partially solve the 
> problem in your head. The slide rule simply gave you the mantissa, the 
> significant figures, not the exponent. So you had to have some idea of the 
> magnitude of the answer. Thus .03 and 300 look alike. The learned ability 
> to estimate the magnitude of an answer is lost with most modern computing 
> methods. I often got absurd answers from many of my students who used the 
> latest electronic calculators.
>       The slide rule is still the best tool for figuring out proportions. 
> A circular slide rule was awkward to carry but it never went off the scale 
> and the length was far greater than the physical dimension. A 6 inch 
> circular rule is equivalent to an 18 inch linear one. It could be easily 
> read to three significant figures and a fourth figure could be estimated. 
> I believe that a number of pilots still use E6B circular slide rules, 
> reddubbed as ?Aviation Flight Computers.? Again, no batteries needed.
>       As I said there is a lot of other stuff interred in the bottom 
> drawers, including 8, yes 8, Leicas ranging from a IIIb to a pair of M3s, 
> an old digital Leica (rebadged from a Fuji), a Russian imitation of a Nazi 
> Luftwaffe Leica. a 1927 Leica 1 and a CL. I?m not a collector, just a pack 
> rat. I bought cheap stuff, Leicas, Robots, Contaxes and Minoxes from old 
> camera stores and put them back in working condition, although I had the 
> M3s CLAd by Sherri Krauter. But as I said in a long ago post my kids will 
> probably discard all the antique cameras, wondering what the old man did 
> with all that mechanical junk when all photography is digital.
>       I confess that I gave into the siren song of electronics by buying 
> one of the first HP 35 calculators for the outrageous sum of $395. It was 
> replaced with an HP 45 and then an HP 65. All at ever lowering prices. A 
> couple of years ago I bought a half dozen Chinese made calculators with 
> far more capability than the HP models. They cost $1 each. I can afford to 
> throw them away when the batteries die. Digital photography seems to be 
> following the same route.
>       Larry Z
>
>
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