Came across this today while antiquing with the wife.
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Once upon a time I could use one to solve problems.?ÿ Now I could use the "C", "CI" and "D" scales but that's it.?ÿ Of course we had to take a slide rule course in our Freshman year.
Andy
Used to move mountains with such things every day. ?ÿWould need a two hour refresher course now.
Back in the late 1960s in high school during extracurricular activities did compete against others in slide rule across Texas using what was called the Picket & Eckel speed rule.
Have a couple of Post rules that I used in the field to compute stakeout when we were using transit and chain.
They were great, never needed a battery and were very reliable.
Today, I would not be able to do very much without instructions.
I still have my circular Pickett Slide Rule from High School UIL competition.
Noticed the sunglasses in the first photo and realized that is the teachers version that hung above the blackboard.?ÿ What is the overall size??ÿ I have seen them that are about five feet long.
So did you buy it?
I used a Post Versalog from sr year high school through college and first few years on the job.?ÿ First saw a scientific pocket calculator shortly before I graduated but didn't have one for a while.
I would be a little slow now on some of the more esoteric scales, but would have no problem with the common ones, other than my old eyes dont see as well, making it harder to interpolate the marks.
If you place a big rubber band over the outside on "A"?ÿ then place the other end on the "K&E" you can shoot the middle slide about 40-50'. ?????ÿ
Remember slide rule belt holsters??ÿ The perfect fashion complement for a pocket protector.
I used to keep enough crap in my stylish pocket protector to graffiti the entire Washington Monument and half of Abraham Lincoln. Looked like a giant boob transplant was on one side of me.?ÿ ?ÿ?????ÿ
I have an HP41CX sitting on my desk; it takes batteries, but I always have a spare set...
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I too have an ancient HP 41CX on my desk. In 2011, I had to buy an approved calculator to take the CFedS exams. I ended up buying the HP 35s, which brought me full circle to the spring of 1972. I was attending the Univ. of Nebraska at Lincoln at the time and the Nebraska Bookstore had the cat's meow in their locked display case. It was an HP 35 calculator that did log and trig functions; HOLY COW! My friends and I drooled at getting one. I don't recall the price, but I'm betting it was close to HP's suggested retail of $395.00. For several days I practiced having a conversation with my dad about why I needed such a thing. His answer was an emphatic, "NO!"
In high school I had used a plastic K&E slide rule, but in college I decided I needed some real computing power so went with one of the Pickett duplex log log slide rules. I went all out and got the aluminum model painted yellow and of course, I had the leather case with belt strap so I would always have that 12" of calculating power close at hand. Funny thing when the HP 35 came out, my professors all announced that calculators would be forbidden during exams as they regarding their use as academic cheating.
Times changed and I bought my 41CX when I went back to college in 1982. All the young kids had one and they were great at getting "answers" really quick. The sad reality was that they never had to learn how to get an approx. answer in their head like everyone had to due before with slide rules. They just wrote down whatever the calculator said. Because I was weaned on slide rules and had been a surveyor for 6 years I invariably knew when the 41CX gave me a silly answer. It was almost always due to my fat fingering something.
I still use my 41CX for solars (yes, solars) and have nearly all the accessories, even the bar code reader! ????
we had one like that hanging in the hallway at Oregon Tech. Pretty sweet.
It was about 1964 at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas when I first saw a classroom sized slide rule like the one in the OP, or any slide rule, for that matter. ?ÿIt was mounted on the wall at the front of a math classroom. ?ÿOne of my sister's friends was able to tell me what it was and how you could multiply and divide numbers with it very quickly. ?ÿThat intrigued me. ?ÿAcquired a small, wooden one a couple of years later and figured out the basics. ?ÿAmazed my classroom teacher.
The standard size model made out of plastic was used throughout my university years. ?ÿCould not afford to buy the $200 TI calculator that could only add, subtract, multiply and divide let alone buy the $425 HP that included trig functions and some storage of numbers. ?ÿBesides, there was one very important function that the slide rule could do that the calculators did not. ?ÿIt was possible to neatly write critical magic formulae in pencil around the two faces of the slide rule at test time. ?ÿThat was a wonderful assist.
