Anyone ever use a slide rule? (material, stability, website, computers)

[Cida]

I had to learn to use one briefly in school!



Walter Shawlee, the Sovereign of Slide Rules, Is Dead at 73
Mr. Shawlee was not merely a slide-rule sentimentalist in thrall to memories of teenage geekdom. He argued that slide rules had intrinsic appeal for several reasons.
He saw dignity, for example, in their solidity and design. In a 1999 profile by The Times, Mr. Shawlee described slide rules as “the techno-guys’ version of a broadsword.” On his website, the Slide Rule Universe, he contrasted them with digital technology. “In 50 years, the computer you are using to view this webpage will be landfill,” he wrote, “but your trusty slide rule will just be nicely broken in!”
https://dnyuz.com/2024/02/08/walter-...is-dead-at-73/

[suzy_q2010]

Yep, I used one!

[harry chickpea]

Dietzgen log log deci-trig.

The issue with them was corrosion. They had to be used constantly and have lubrication applied and then wiped down. 3 figure accuracy was common.

The concept was not limited to math. There are slide rules and circular slide rule used in areas like color coordination, etc..

[elnina]

I was taught at the school how to use it and actually used it for some time before computers and calculators.

What corrosion? Typical, everyday slide rules aren't made of corrosive materials.
This is my old slide rule:



And those are old collections
Dietzgen 1732 decimal trig log log duplex slide rule: (I had one of those too. My father was an architect.)

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1127910

[elnina]

What about this fun little gadget?? I used it too...
ARITHMA addiator calculator with stylus



https://uxplanet.org/3-reasons-this-...d-738707af7461

https://youtu.be/2mv45XP48bQ?si=OXDtzlHiqvBpz9zE

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by elnina

I was taught at the school how to use it and actually used it for some time before computers and calculators.

What corrosion? Typical, everyday slide rules aren't made of corrosive materials.
This is my old slide rule:



And those are old collections
Dietzgen 1732 decimal trig log log duplex slide rule: (I had one of those too. My father was an architect.)

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1127910

Aluminum. Not the cheap plastic stuff that many others were made of. Faced hardwood was OK.

[elnina]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

Aluminum. Not the cheap plastic stuff that many others were made of. Faced hardwood was OK.

Then it's good that they switched to eliminate aluminum.
Mine pictured above is 70+ years old, used and abused and still looks and performs like new.

[tnff]

Yep, I started with a slide rule just as we switched to calculators. Mostly TI38s with a few guys loving the RPN on the HPs. One day a professor had a race between his slide rule and a guy with the HP. Slide rule won.

I do believe there was some value in working problems that way over modern use of MATLAB. You got a better intuitive feel for what the equations were telling you. Too many guys today simply trust what MATLAB spits out without regard to whether the solution is real. Or happens to be a solution that goes under the earth's surface.

And I still have my dad's Addiator in my desk.

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by elnina

Then it's good that they switched to eliminate aluminum.
Mine pictured above is 70+ years old, used and abused and still looks and performs like new.

Yeah, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time (dimensional stability), but I could see that it regularly had a darkening to the light lubricant when I used it, and when I didn't over the summer it was almost stuck together. I liked it otherwise. It was a few years before the first Casio and TI calculators came out.

[rjshae]

I experimented with a plastic slide rule briefly in high school, then the pocket calculator came along. My dad was an engineer and he had a really beautiful slide rule. I'm not sure what happened to it.