I got a slide rule app for my Droid.
Still have my dads old slide rule. Don't have a clue how to use it. 🙂
Between the time I went into the Army and got out was when electronic calculators came on board. I had used a slide rule. The first year back in school I was too poor for one of the calculators and only had a 6 inch slide rule, the bigger one in the kit had got lost. The other students thought I was a dinosaur but I did just fine for the year at the junior college before the transfer to the university. I can't exactly remember which HP I got, but it was programmable but still had the red lit numbers. Don't remember the exact cost just that it wiped out our budget for a couple months to buy it. Been a rpn HP guy ever since. Last one is Free42, a free app that works on my phone.
I still have the 6 inch slide rule in the drawer, but never use it to actually do any work. Don't remember what ever happened to the original HP calculator, probably threw it out when I got the HP 15 about 8 years later.
Taught my self how to use slide rules when I was in high school. Very useful for math and physics. Can still use one - although I have to generally do a couple of simple exercises to get myself up to speed.
Have quite a few in my collection - mostly with survey applications such as stadia and hour angle solar reduction.
And BTW, if anyone would like one to play with, I have several "new in box" that I'd be willing to part with. Contact me if interested.
:good:
Slide rule 101
I was a bigtime nerd. Maybe I still am. Got my first slide rule in about the Seventh Grade. Used it for all sorts of things (including swatting at flies). Started college with one about 12-14 inches long made out of plastic. Man, that thing was fantastic. I could use an Eversharp to lightly write all of the magic formulas (formulae?) that would needed for a specific engineering exam on it. No need to memorize all that stuff. Just remember which formula went with which type of problem. Never had a professor come along and inspect my slide rule. Besides, carefully rubbing the plastic would have destroyed all the evidence before it was handed to him. Let's see you do that with a pocket calculator.
TI's were far cheaper and less capable that HP's. When you are trying to eat on $8.00 per week for two people, luxuries just don't happen. Actually rented a simple pocket calculator for maybe $5 to get through a couple of tests my senior year. The advantage was that all the instructors/professors were as new to pocket calculators as the students. Therefore, all tests were designed with slide rules in mind.
