you know you're getting old when...
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Diagnostics booted from punch tape programmers keyed in their programs using the front panel switches used slide rules instead of calculators
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Older than methane.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
Older than methane
Well, being THAT old must stink.
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL -
rollei35guy wrote:
used slide rules instead of calculators
hey now. I did that back in 1999. :-O
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
Dan Neely wrote:
I did that back in 1999
You must have been in the slow class. :-D Engineering classes were already impossible to pass without a scientific calculator by 1979. Luckily, I found that my slide rule was also an excellent tool for stirring paint, else it would have been tossed aside.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Don’t be so shy, ask her to marry you.
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
Nope, not a chance. I could never marry a girl who likes cream in coffee. It just wouldn't work... :sigh:
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Dan Neely wrote:
I did that back in 1999
You must have been in the slow class. :-D Engineering classes were already impossible to pass without a scientific calculator by 1979. Luckily, I found that my slide rule was also an excellent tool for stirring paint, else it would have been tossed aside.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
I unearthed my Dietzgen while packing to move. I was just in on the switch over to calculators. I would go into finals with an HP45 and the slide rule just in case the HP's batteries gave out.
modified on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:24 PM
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Dan Neely wrote:
I did that back in 1999
You must have been in the slow class. :-D Engineering classes were already impossible to pass without a scientific calculator by 1979. Luckily, I found that my slide rule was also an excellent tool for stirring paint, else it would have been tossed aside.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
You must have been in the slow class. Big Grin
Honors HS Physics actually. My teacher had spent the first 2/3rds of the year, the year before that when I had him for regular physics, and apparently several years prior to that venting about how people had become too addicted to their calculators and were unable to function without them (Idiot Box Dependency). On March 1 he handed out photocopies of Isaac Asimov's The Feeling of Power[^] waited while we read it; and then announced that March was Calculator Free Month and that any Idiot Boxes seen in his class would be confiscated until the end of the day. He followed up with a lecture on using a log table; and a few days later (to give parents time to dig through junk drawers) a second on how to use a slide rule. The results of the test at the end of the month proved him out; it had 2 questions that needed math. Nearly half of his students didn't correctly answer the problem which involved multiplying 10 * 100 * sin45 (value on the blackboard). Even after discounting the people whose problem was with reading comprehension (and used g=9.81m/s instead of 10), :doh: that was an appalling result. Arguably worse was that one of his physics 1 students wasn't able to answer the second problem which merely required doing 2 * 3. :omg:
Roger Wright wrote:
Engineering classes were already impossible to pass without a scientific calculator by 1979.
Unless it was by design I find that hard to believe. A good sliderule has all the functions of a scientific calculator; and a reasonably skilled user can get two digits of precision in a similar amount of time as would be taken to enter them into the calculator; with a vernier scale (a more complicated design) you can get three digits without needing to interpolate. For demonstrating that you understand the concept more precision is almost never needed. Edit: While I didn't see the point in getting that level of speed with a slipstick because in my early teens I could outrace mentally outrace anyone with 4 digit multiplication (eg 123*4 or 12*34); and could beat most calculator jockeys with 5 digits. My performance had slowed a bit by my senior year in HS; but I still kept it up reasonably well to justify never showing work in my
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Nope, not a chance. I could never marry a girl who likes cream in coffee. It just wouldn't work... :sigh:
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
Nope, not a chance. I could never marry a girl who likes cream in coffee. It just wouldn't work... Sigh
You have to have your standards ...
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Nope, not a chance. I could never marry a girl who likes cream in coffee. It just wouldn't work... :sigh:
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
:laugh:
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Roger Wright wrote:
You must have been in the slow class. Big Grin
Honors HS Physics actually. My teacher had spent the first 2/3rds of the year, the year before that when I had him for regular physics, and apparently several years prior to that venting about how people had become too addicted to their calculators and were unable to function without them (Idiot Box Dependency). On March 1 he handed out photocopies of Isaac Asimov's The Feeling of Power[^] waited while we read it; and then announced that March was Calculator Free Month and that any Idiot Boxes seen in his class would be confiscated until the end of the day. He followed up with a lecture on using a log table; and a few days later (to give parents time to dig through junk drawers) a second on how to use a slide rule. The results of the test at the end of the month proved him out; it had 2 questions that needed math. Nearly half of his students didn't correctly answer the problem which involved multiplying 10 * 100 * sin45 (value on the blackboard). Even after discounting the people whose problem was with reading comprehension (and used g=9.81m/s instead of 10), :doh: that was an appalling result. Arguably worse was that one of his physics 1 students wasn't able to answer the second problem which merely required doing 2 * 3. :omg:
Roger Wright wrote:
Engineering classes were already impossible to pass without a scientific calculator by 1979.
Unless it was by design I find that hard to believe. A good sliderule has all the functions of a scientific calculator; and a reasonably skilled user can get two digits of precision in a similar amount of time as would be taken to enter them into the calculator; with a vernier scale (a more complicated design) you can get three digits without needing to interpolate. For demonstrating that you understand the concept more precision is almost never needed. Edit: While I didn't see the point in getting that level of speed with a slipstick because in my early teens I could outrace mentally outrace anyone with 4 digit multiplication (eg 123*4 or 12*34); and could beat most calculator jockeys with 5 digits. My performance had slowed a bit by my senior year in HS; but I still kept it up reasonably well to justify never showing work in my
Dan Neely wrote:
Unless it was by design I find that hard to believe
It was by design. Where previously a test would contain ten reasonably difficult problems, by my junior year they were being written with programmable scientific calculators in mind, containing twenty or thirty questions that were numerically intense. One class in particular was mind bending, even with calculators. In Control Systems we had ten questions, each of which required the answer to the previous question to continue, to modify the design of a complex control system to remove some undesirable behaviors. This involved root locus calculations using 10th order differential equations, multiple input vectors, and multiple outputs. A friend and I spent the entire weekend before the test designing a program for our HP-67 calculators to solve for roots of an nth order equation; memory limits kept us to 20th order, but I think our approach would have done for any order if the technology had been available. We both passed, but only because we showed up for the test with our idiot boxes preprogrammed. The others didn't do so well. We found out after the fact that the questions were actually intended to solve a problem the instructor had at his day job. He was the lead engineer responsible for designing a missile-tracking gun system to defend ships from cruise missiles, and his design was having problems he and his team couldn't solve. He decided to throw it out to his students to see what we could come up with. Clever approach, I thought. :-D I completely agree with your teacher, by the way. No one should be allowed to use a calculator until he/she can demonstrate proficiency at performing calculations manually. Reliance on machines makes the mind weak, and the earlier it starts, the worse the end result. I was never a lightning calculator, but I could always spot patterns others can't see, and could use that ability to "see" the answer long before others could calculate it. It was a mixed blessing; I was a teacher's favorite student, and the preferred target for for schoolyard abuse.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Dan Neely wrote:
Unless it was by design I find that hard to believe
It was by design. Where previously a test would contain ten reasonably difficult problems, by my junior year they were being written with programmable scientific calculators in mind, containing twenty or thirty questions that were numerically intense. One class in particular was mind bending, even with calculators. In Control Systems we had ten questions, each of which required the answer to the previous question to continue, to modify the design of a complex control system to remove some undesirable behaviors. This involved root locus calculations using 10th order differential equations, multiple input vectors, and multiple outputs. A friend and I spent the entire weekend before the test designing a program for our HP-67 calculators to solve for roots of an nth order equation; memory limits kept us to 20th order, but I think our approach would have done for any order if the technology had been available. We both passed, but only because we showed up for the test with our idiot boxes preprogrammed. The others didn't do so well. We found out after the fact that the questions were actually intended to solve a problem the instructor had at his day job. He was the lead engineer responsible for designing a missile-tracking gun system to defend ships from cruise missiles, and his design was having problems he and his team couldn't solve. He decided to throw it out to his students to see what we could come up with. Clever approach, I thought. :-D I completely agree with your teacher, by the way. No one should be allowed to use a calculator until he/she can demonstrate proficiency at performing calculations manually. Reliance on machines makes the mind weak, and the earlier it starts, the worse the end result. I was never a lightning calculator, but I could always spot patterns others can't see, and could use that ability to "see" the answer long before others could calculate it. It was a mixed blessing; I was a teacher's favorite student, and the preferred target for for schoolyard abuse.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
It was by design. Where previously a test would contain ten reasonably difficult problems, by my junior year they were being written with programmable scientific calculators in mind, containing twenty or thirty questions that were numerically intense.
That was my experience.
Roger Wright wrote:
We both passed, but only because we showed up for the test with our idiot boxes preprogrammed. The others didn't do so well.
For a while programmable calculators or calculators with a memory were often banned.