Still love your old slide rule? This guy was obsessed

[Bekeart]

Still Carry Slide Rule in my Truck - NO BATTERIES REQUIRED

Went to truck to get detail - Aluminum Pickett Model 803-ES.

Mostly use C and D for fuel mileage calculations.
Occasionally used for land area calculatiion.

Wonder what price Mr. Shawlee would have put on it.

Pickett Model 803-ES ebay prices $44 / $120 / $190

Same question for value of the Post Versalog in desk.
Googled and see $175 / $250 / $350 Versalog prices on ebay.

Also still have and use occasionally:
Monroe Mechanical Calculator in Field Carry Case hand powered cranks - No Power Cord
ebay $168 without the Field Carry Case

Slide rule users were usually good at mentally calculating the answer.
Then we knew where the decimal point went.
Slice rule just digits - NO DECIMAL POINT.

Bekeart

 

[Yaworski]

Later, in the early 70's when Bowmar introduced the Bowmar Brain . . .

A friend just had to have the Bowmar Brain when it came out and badgered his father until he got one. A few years later when everyone else was getting a scientific calculator, his father said, "You got your calculator. Deal with it."

 

[DWalt]

A brief historical treatment of early TI digital calculators. Texas Instruments 2500 At the end, there are links to histories of calculators of other types made by other companies.

I bought my first calculator about 1973. It was not a TI, but some Japanese 4-Banger. It was on sale at the local K-Mart for around $80, which was expensive at the time, even though it was fairly cheap compared to other calculators then on the market. It had a green LED display. It quit working after about two years, but by then, calculator technology had advanced greatly, and I bought a scientific TI to replace it, do not remember the model number. I did not use my slide rule much after that.

I remember that in the earlier days, TI was selling calculators directly to customers by mail order. I knew someone who bought a calculator direct from TI. In the late 1970s, my wife was working in a TI assembly plant (as a company nurse) and could buy about any product TI made at an employee price, which was about half the retail price. TI was also making wristwatches then. TI watch production didn't last for long, market was too competitive and no profit. She really liked that job, great pay. Assembly line workers were always mashing their fingers in equipment and she would patch them up.

 

[oldbrownhat]

...It eliminated mistakes when doing "simple math" that so often tripped me up.

Which is why my biology/genetics prof. gf despairs at her students' inability to do "simple math." (One claimed that the square root of 3 was 9 )

We all have calculators on our phones, but it's easy to make an error in entering data, and if you don't have some idea what the answer should be, you likely won't see a potential error.

Wasn't there an acronym back in the early days of computer programming: GIGO, ie Garbage In, Garbage Out?

 

[CH4]

My dad was a Chemical Engineer for the Navy, and did design work on nuclear submarines in the late 1950s with a slide rule (which I now have). Even though calculators were available before he retired, I don't think he ever used one...

All of my math, chemistry or physics professors used slide rules. Dr. Robert Stewart taught me how to use one. I was one of few who didn't often use our calculators. Haven't touched one in 45 years. Mine was a K&E that Dr. Stewart gifted me.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

I have an old K & E around here somewhere.
5-6 E6B and similar aircraft calculators in the garage.
3-4 hand calculators with dead batteries somewhere.
I have a couple of calc apps including the financial app which looks like a HP on my iPad.

 

[Retired W4]

I got a lot of use out of my E6-B, but that was a long time ago.

 

[Krogen]

I came up in the calculator era. However, for intellectual enhancement (i.e. for giggles) I bought a slide rule and sought to master it. I didn't. I was able to multiply, but that's about it. I just didn't put the effort into it when I had a calculator at hand.

My preference in calculators is those using Reverse Polish Notation. No = operator, buddy!! While my old HP-15C resides in a drawer, I have an equivalent app on my phone which hangs around in my pocket. I suppose that old slide rule is around here too; somewhere . . . .

 

[Nightowl]

I loaned my K&E to my then brother in law when he was in engineering school. Haven't seen it since! Not that I was ever good at it and exited engineering school into the police world!

 

[Sistema1927]

I have about a dozen or so lurking around here.

Re. @45Smashenflat post #5, I have a small shadow box with a pocket slide rule in it and a placard that reads "In case of power failure break glass" on the wall of my office at church. It used to reside on the wall of my office where I was a system's analyst before I retired.

 

[Onomea]

Some years ago I found a K&E slide rule with a leather case in a thrift shop for $5. I haven't a clue as to how to use one, and was a very poor math student back in high school, but I thought it intriguing, and beautiful.

So I bought it. The leather top was split. I fixed the leather and gave it to my third son, who is an engineer. Not sure what he made of it.

I bought an HP-12C calculator back in 1987 when newly hired for a position which became a 25 year career. Had it on my office desk for all those years, and in retirement it rests on the table next to my chair in the living room. I think I have changed the batteries twice, maybe three times, in 37 years. It's a very well made instrument

 

[Yaworski]

Which is why my biology/genetics prof. gf despairs at her students' inability to do "simple math." (One claimed that the square root of 3 was 9 )

My mother could add numbers faster than you could key them into a calculator. Four digit numbers were the largest that I ever saw her do.

 

[Rustyt1953]

My first calculation;

 

[kozmic]

I had a slide rule in junior college. It scared the bejeebers out of me. When I got to RIT I got the "mac daddy" of all hand held calculators...The much-revered and totally intimidating, HP34c. It's use of reverse logic problem solving was only slightly easier than using an engineering slide rule.
I found it recently; still in the box with manual, charger, etc.) It has a bit of corrosion around the batteries. I cleaned it and ran it thru it's paces. It worked as new. I posted it on Craigslist and got $240.00 for it. I believe that is just about what I paid for it in 1980.

 

[kozmic]

My first calculation;

Go to your room and think about what you've done, Rusty.

 

[Rustyt1953]

My first calculator in college was a Rockwell courtesy of Uncle Sam.

 

[CalifEd]

I had 2 Pickett's, a small one for my geek pocket and a larger one for my school/desk work.
My father was an Electrical Engineer and had a beautiful ivory one that he used every day; I couldn't read the numbers today without a magnifying glass.
Somehow he found a schematic to my TI calculator.
He took it apart and proceed to 'learn' how to use it.
It never returned to a working configuration; never tell an Engineer he is wrong or he can't do something. He'll spend years proving you wrong.

 

[Brian Parrish]

Paper and Pencil

As a teacher and principal in the Christian School I had great success teaching slide rule. I used it in advanced math at the logarithms chapter and after. It was also part of the computer science course. Most of the kids did not have any interest in understanding any math or computer process. They just wanted the "answer". I always challenged them on HOW their calculator got the "answer". "Is there a tiny little man living in there?" "It's maaaaagic!"

A math professor told me that in those programs where they kept doing "paper and pencil calculus" as he called it, they KEPT most of their math majors, but in those schools where they used graphing calculators only, they lost 75% of the math majors, who quit, changed majors or transferred.

 

[Narragansett]

I carried one to college every day. You were allowed 2 ways to solve electrical calcs., long hand on paper or slide rule. Mine is around here somewhere

 

[Golddollar]

My father-in-law was a NASA engineer. Computers existed but were expensive to use and slow so most of the work that got us to the moon was done with slide rule.

Now I have to watch that movie "Hidden Figures." It the story about how for John Glenn's space flight he wanted he wanted back up calculations from the ladies who were doing them the old fashioned way.