Wish this had existed in school
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My brother-in-law - about ten years older than me - used to tell people that he was incapable of summing the grocery bill without having his slide rule available. That joke was surprisingly successful for quite a few years, especially with those my age and younger, who knew well what slide rules were, but never used them seriously, so we didn't know their application area, mathematically speaking. People his own age, who knew slide rules well, found the joke silly. Young people of today have no clue about what a slide rule is, so they never get the joke. But for ten, maybe twenty years, half of the audience would laugh and the other half would wonder: What's so funny?
That's definitely an "in" joke. Even when slide rules were used, not that many people had to use them. Maybe he used it as a litmus test to see who got it.
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Here's a refresher[^]. :laugh:
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Woo-Hoo! Downloaded!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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That's definitely an "in" joke. Even when slide rules were used, not that many people had to use them. Maybe he used it as a litmus test to see who got it.
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The point being that slide rules were not used for addition/subtraction - only for multiplication/division, power/root, exponential/log, and trigonometry.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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I started high school with a slide rule and finished with an HP-45 calculator. I didn't think it could get much better. :laugh:
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High school was Sept 1980- June 1984 Chemistry in 1983 even though we had calculators the chemistry teachers required us to use slide rules. I got to use my Dad's, he was an electrical engineer, had to be VERY careful with it.
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High school was Sept 1980- June 1984 Chemistry in 1983 even though we had calculators the chemistry teachers required us to use slide rules. I got to use my Dad's, he was an electrical engineer, had to be VERY careful with it.
High school was Sept 1970 to June 1974. Chemistry was also where the slide rule or calculator got used the most. But slide rules weren't mandated and very few students used one. The HP-45 came out in 1973.
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Well, in those times mobile phones had antennas. Download Microsoft Math Solver | Step-by-step math problem solver[^]
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
With this had existed in school
On the contrary, I'm happy this did not exist in school. Would have made us more dumb, don't you feel so? Yes, it would have reduced our effort in solving problems, but would not have developed our thinking faculties, and also problem solving abilities, isn't it?
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Jörgen Andersson wrote:
With this had existed in school
On the contrary, I'm happy this did not exist in school. Would have made us more dumb, don't you feel so? Yes, it would have reduced our effort in solving problems, but would not have developed our thinking faculties, and also problem solving abilities, isn't it?
You're quite right. Let me rephrase: I would have wished this had existed when I were in school. Because like everyone else (well, mostly) I'm a lazy bastard. But yes, it would have made made me more stupid, like the kids today. :)
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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I started high school with a slide rule and finished with an HP-45 calculator. I didn't think it could get much better. :laugh:
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It could! Some of us used Texas TI-51. So there, HP-freak :-) ...
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Well, in those times mobile phones had antennas. Download Microsoft Math Solver | Step-by-step math problem solver[^]
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
Well, in those times mobile phones had antennas.
In those times they were called 'Walkie Talkie'[^]. I liked that name - in fact I find it would fit mobiles today even better ;)
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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I started high school with a slide rule and finished with an HP-45 calculator. I didn't think it could get much better. :laugh:
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Same for me, only I ended up with a RPN[^] calculator, the Omron 12SR[^]
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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I went through all school including high school equivalent with a book of log tables! No fancy slide-rule technology for me - never mind a calculator!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Me too! Started Uni with a double-scale slide rule, finished with some weird 12 digit calculator which only had a 6 digit display!. Went all the way through school (until my last year) using my father's old 7 figure log tables. Still got them: showed them to a class of 14 year old IT students recently - they'd never even heard of them!
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High school was Sept 1970 to June 1974. Chemistry was also where the slide rule or calculator got used the most. But slide rules weren't mandated and very few students used one. The HP-45 came out in 1973.
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Here's a refresher[^]. :laugh:
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Blimey, I have an almost exact 'clone' of that rule made by Faber Castell - it's the one I used through 6th Form and most of Uni...
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I found one of my old slide rules a few months ago. I couldn't remember how to use it :sigh:
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
I had a circular slide rule - fitted neatly in the inside pocket and was easier to use than a linear 6" rule.
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I had a circular slide rule - fitted neatly in the inside pocket and was easier to use than a linear 6" rule.
I saw those in the uni shop and was tempted, but I was on student money and had to pinch pennies. But when you can buy a boxload without feeling it, you don't need them any more :(
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I found one of my old slide rules a few months ago. I couldn't remember how to use it :sigh:
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Here's a refresher[^]. :laugh:
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That is a lot of reading. Where is the 30 second YouTube video? ;P
My plan is to live forever ... so far so good
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Same for me, only I ended up with a RPN[^] calculator, the Omron 12SR[^]
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
HP calculators were (are?) also RPN.
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Well, in those times mobile phones had antennas. Download Microsoft Math Solver | Step-by-step math problem solver[^]
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
If you are helping your children with math you have not seen in 20+ years, I found Alpha Wolfram (free edition) incredibly helpful. On some problems, the free version would not show all of the intermediate steps, but you could at least find the correct answer.
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HP calculators were (are?) also RPN.
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Now that you mention it, at the time when I had that Omron (around 1980), there was one HP model around that at least one of the other students used. But most were using TI caluclators with direct input and brackets. I believe RPN was all but forgotten by the time I went to university (1984). That's when I got my first programmable pocket calculator, with a whopping 10 KB memory (quite a lot when you take into consideration this was still the high time of the 8 bit home computers)
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
