Great article it reminded me of a book I was recently reading called “Empire of the sum: the rise and reign of the pocket calculator” by Keith Houston . Two interesting tidbits about the slide rule I always thought were cool. “The E6b slide rule appeared in Star Trek more than once, a retro futuristic anachronism in Mr. Spock’s scientific toolkit and it is still in use for training pilots a century after its invention.”
“It is not known whether Neil Armstrong or buzz aldrin ever had to break out their slide rules while aboard the Apollo but that did not stop aldrin’s rule from fetching $77,675 at auction in 2007.”
I hope that somewhere someone is still producing these marvels - we'll need them again when civilization collapses and our electrical grid along with it.
I used mine until about 1978. Still have it somewhere…it was a pocket-sized one gift from my engineer father when I was 12. Hadn’t thought about it in decades though, til now. Thanks Bill!
Amazing stuff. I never understood logarithms (or their etymology) or slide rules (and their purposes and operation) until now. If HWB had been my high school math teacher, I might well have gone into STEM rather than the humanities and liberal arts.
Great article it reminded me of a book I was recently reading called “Empire of the sum: the rise and reign of the pocket calculator” by Keith Houston . Two interesting tidbits about the slide rule I always thought were cool. “The E6b slide rule appeared in Star Trek more than once, a retro futuristic anachronism in Mr. Spock’s scientific toolkit and it is still in use for training pilots a century after its invention.”
“It is not known whether Neil Armstrong or buzz aldrin ever had to break out their slide rules while aboard the Apollo but that did not stop aldrin’s rule from fetching $77,675 at auction in 2007.”
I hope that somewhere someone is still producing these marvels - we'll need them again when civilization collapses and our electrical grid along with it.
Thank you. I didn't know all of this.
I used mine until about 1978. Still have it somewhere…it was a pocket-sized one gift from my engineer father when I was 12. Hadn’t thought about it in decades though, til now. Thanks Bill!
Amazing stuff. I never understood logarithms (or their etymology) or slide rules (and their purposes and operation) until now. If HWB had been my high school math teacher, I might well have gone into STEM rather than the humanities and liberal arts.