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When Slide Rules Were Like Cellphones (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the back-in-the-day dept.

szczys writes: Slide Rules and Pocket Protectors are the go-to items when making fun of old-time geeks. Forget the pocket protectors. Slide Rules were the first personal computers and a status symbol akin to what cellphones are today. Of course the general public wasn't attached to them, but engineers were. Before electronic calculators came around, everyone who needed to do some serious math owned Slide Rules. Stunningly easy to use and extremely effective, they have tick-marks placed on a logarithmic scale which makes complex multiplication, division, powers, etc. into visual calculations instead of mental ones.

4 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. hence the old joke... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    (Disclaimer: I used a slide rule in high school in the 1970's, and we actually had a section of a class in how to do so)

    Person A: "What's 2 times 2?"
    Person B: "Let me check my slide rule, one sec... OK, looks like around 3.96."

  2. This is all well and good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    But how can we use slide rules to encourage women and minorities to join STEM fields?

  3. 50 Shades of Slide Rule by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Funny

    Use it as a paddle?

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  4. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. by mcswell · · Score: 4, Funny

    Slide rules are indeed a very old technology. In fact, the underlying principle goes all the way back to Noah.

    After Noah got off the Ark, he sent the animals to go forth and multiply. And each month he went out to see how they were doing. As you might guess, after the first month or so there were baby rabbits, then baby cats and dogs soon after, and even a baby elephant after the first year. But month after month, Noah could find no baby snakes.

    Finally it dawned on him that the snakes were cold blooded, and needed to sun themselves in order to get active. But the wet ground, and the lack of trees, had been perfect for bushes, weeds, and all kinds of plants, and the snakes were getting shaded out as it were. So Noah went back to the Ark, collected some timbers he'd used to strengthen the decks, and used them to build a table. And sure enough, the next month there were baby snakes! (scroll down...)















    Which just shows to go, even an adder can multiply if you give him a log table.