I've used "Ranger beads" that are a form of an abacus. It's for counting steps while navigating. I used to be almost as good as a GPS with only a compass and step count for navigating. I was only off about 50 feet/mile.
Anyone here use slide rules back in the day?
- Thread starter Rusty Blade
- Start date
I've used "Ranger beads" that are a form of an abacus. It's for counting steps while navigating. I used to be almost as good as a GPS with only a compass and step count for navigating. I was only off about 50 feet/mile.
Do you know if our ancestors (I'm thinking President George Washington) used this kind of "tech" back in the early days of our exploration and surveying here in America?
Yeah, but only under candlelight!
And I doublecheck my work with a buddy through smoke signals!
Louis and Clarke used some of it. Their travels were incredible.
I used celestial navigation to cross oceans in the KC-135.
You can navigate in the Middle East with a storyline, a stick and a piece of leather cord.
Israel was surveyed and apportioned by 2503 (Jewish year. It's 5781 now.)
Found another one. An 11" Sterling Precision, with pamphlet and case. $1
I never used one myself. However, my first year in college, freshmen chemistry, the professor (Harvard PHD, chain smoking, little man) would challenge anyone to solving math problems with him using a slide rule, and you using a calculator. To my knowledge no one ever beat him.
From what I remember experts on the abacus could out perform folks on a calculator, too.
Post Versalog (my dads) hung off my belt freshman year of College. Chem E. Bought an HP-45 when they came out. Ridiculous price. Still prefer RPN and us an HP-11C/12C app on all my mobile devices. Used to love watching the LEDs flicker during processing. Favorite was the big clunky Wangs. Moved on to FORTRAN, PL/1. Had a grad school officemate that programmed in APL. That was weird.
ERS4
My exploding razor knows secrets
I live in Taiwan, although abacus is not as popular as before, but there are many people still learn to use abacus since childhood.
I still use an abacus for arithmetic, and use a small abacus as a razor blade tracking device.
My new blade tracking device
Somebody stop me! I bought another slide rule!
A 12 1/2" USA made K&E Log and Trig model. Nice shape with hard case, but has a slight owners mark. Marked with a copyright date of 1947.
Was listed for $6 but I had some store credit so got it for free.
A 12 1/2" USA made K&E Log and Trig model. Nice shape with hard case, but has a slight owners mark. Marked with a copyright date of 1947.
Was listed for $6 but I had some store credit so got it for free.
Lefonque
Even more clueless than you
Only used a slide rule to hit the bloke that sat next to me at school 55 years ago.
I've got a smaller 10" in my truck. I keep in practice by computing my fuel mileage every time I fill up. No need to go to 3 decimal places - just if it drops 1 or 2 mpg in a week I know I've got a problem.
Here is the one I used in elementary school.
I used this slide rule all through college (Chemistry and Physics, mostly). A few years ago, I was helping my teen granddaughter with logarithms--I casually mentioned that they were the basis of how slide rules were constructed. She, of course, asked me what a slide rule was. So I dug this out and showed her how multiplication and division worked. To her credit, she thought it was cool. She never did ask to borrow it, though. Her loss.
Pickett, N1010-ES, Trig
Pickett, N1010-ES, Trig
Yeah, just like with manual shift cars - no worries about somebody stealing your slide rule.
I used one in high school and college and also lugged around my CRC Tables.
I always liked slide rules. Currently I have four. I keep a K & E plastic business slide rule in my workshop and use it often to calculate how much metal I need to cut to make a collar or a tube with a certain diameter. It never needs batteries. I have my plastic Pickett 120 trainer from high school. It has the same scales as the Nestler 23, which was the favorite slide rule of both Werner von Braun and also of Sergei Korolov, his Russian counterpart in the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s (K, A, B, S, T, CI C, D, L). About ten years ago I went on eBay to buy a nice Dietzgen Log-Log duplex slide rule. I did that to satisfy my midlife crisis rather than buy the red sports car. It needed new glass pieces on the cursor and I made them from Plexiglass. Other than lacking authenticity, they work great. A couple of years later an engineer died and his widow voluntarily gave me his K & E Log-Log rule. Manuals for vintage slide rules are on-line and can be downloaded free.
I forgot about the CRC tables. I used my Dad’s copy (red cover), but I think it disappeared in our last move. Shame, really.
rbscebu
Girls call me Makaluod
I used a slide rule and log tables up to and including in my first few years of university. From memory, the first retail calculators where availability in my second undergraduate year. They were by Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard, costing about a week's salary.
It was only in my latter undergraduate years that I experienced calculators, and then they were still rather basic.
I don't have a slide rule now but still use my steam tables when needed in design work.
It was only in my latter undergraduate years that I experienced calculators, and then they were still rather basic.
I don't have a slide rule now but still use my steam tables when needed in design work.
