When Slide Rules Were Like Cellphones (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 5, 2015 @03:02PM 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.

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Jeppesen by Dantoo · 2015-11-05 15:27 · Score: 5, Informative

The Jeppesen CR-3 Flight Computer is a circular slide rule that is still in use today. The circular slide rule has long been a tool of pilots, air traffic controllers and even bookmakers! It's not just science types that use slide rules.