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I remember having to use it but I wasn't very good at it. I never really liked math anyway. Calculators are so much better for arithmetic and doing everyday stuff. And now, with it on my iPhone, I is so much quicker.
Amazing to realize that we put human beings on the moon with a slide rule. By the time of Apollo 11 there were primitive computers on board the spacecraft, but almost all of the routine design calculations done by NASA engineers were done by the slide rule. The labor required for this endeavor was enormous. A rough estimate I saw recently was about 1.0 to 1.5 million man-years.
As an engineer today, I can't imagine falling back to the slide rule. For that matter falling back to the calculator. Sure we use a calculator from time to time but most significant analysis is done on a computer/server. Many design calculations involve the manipulation of large matrices, which is not practical on a pocket calculator.
Last edited by GearHeadDave; 01-30-2021 at 09:21 AM..
Sliderules were mass produced all the way to the end of production in the 1970's. No one in the industry saw the demise coming at the time until it was too late. Be careful in investing in an old rule these days though. Some are in excellent condition while others are worn out. I am in possession of a Picket and Eckel N1010T made of chrome that is in mint condition for instance but I also have a couple of cheap no-name plastic rules that either get stuck when sliding out or part of the writing is rubbed off. Picket and Eckel, Kueffel and Esser, and Faber-Castell were mass producers of sturdy rules made of good materials.
I was pretty good with a slide rule at one point in high school, but preferred an early TI-11 calculator, even if I had to use log and trig tables with interpolation. I have always wanted a Curta since I first heard about them The CURTA Calculator Page A super cool mechanical calculator, much used by rally drivers when electronic aids were not allowed.
My Granddad had a Comptometer that looked something like this which was super cool to enter 2 large numbers and multiply them to watch the carriage move and listen to the gears whir
Wha--? With a slide rule you might get 3 significant digits. Scientific calculators are precise to 10 digits or more.
You're confusing precision with accuracy. They are two different things that people commonly mix up. The more digits you can get the more accurate the number is. However, if you do not need to be accurate but you need to be precise, the sliderule helps you locate your number better than a device that spits out 2.66666667.
Here is one website that describes the difference between accuracy and precision and their relation to the sliderule:
You're confusing precision with accuracy. They are two different things that people commonly mix up. The more digits you can get the more accurate the number is. However, if you do not need to be accurate but you need to be precise, the sliderule helps you locate your number better than a device that spits out 2.66666667.
Here is one website that describes the difference between accuracy and precision and their relation to the sliderule:
You have it backwards--more digits doesn't mean more accuracy. From your link:
Very roughly, precision is how many significant digits you can read off the scale, and accuracy is how close your result is to the true result.
As to the topic, slide rules were long gone by the time I was an engineering student in the early 90s. I wouldn't know a slide rule if I tripped over one.
You have it backwards--more digits doesn't mean more accuracy. From your link:
Very roughly, precision is how many significant digits you can read off the scale, and accuracy is how close your result is to the true result.
As to the topic, slide rules were long gone by the time I was an engineering student in the early 90s. I wouldn't know a slide rule if I tripped over one.
I stand corrected. However, the point I was trying to make is the sliderule yields enough significant digits for a calculation so you don't need the extra digits. I wonder when do the additional digits become insignificant and that you would not need them. After all, you don't need 2.66666667 when 2.66 or 2.67 is good enough.
This engineer below makes a good statement that conveys what I was trying to mean with the use of the sliderule.
"Good engineering practice is to express results to the same number of significant digits as the measured value with the least number of significant digits." he says.
A fun story...back in the late sixties I was a senior engineering type for a Fortune 50 company. We developed the capability of designing our own logic chips. Used a four phase dynamic system that actually worked well. Shipped internal designs in quantity by the late 60s.
A few of my engineers got together outside of work and developed a calculator chip. Actually more sophisticated than the early computer chips. And they made samples with the help of an engineer at a semi manufacturer who slid them into the test spot on some production dies. I do not think they ever had as many as a hundred chips. They then went to sell them. Got thrown out of every likely marketer of such a device because they would not admit where the design or processing was done. A shame they never told me about it until decades later. I think at the time we had a couple of high technologists in high places that might have been willing to enable corporate support.
So a boot legged calculator chip did not see the light of day. It was a couple of years before the real thing appeared...and the slide rule got an extra couple of years.
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which was super cool to enter 2 large numbers and multiply them to watch the carriage move and listen to the gears whir
