5 ms·

Walter Shawlee, the sovereign of slide rules, has died

141 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

dreamcompiler 3y ago
I still have my old slide rule (aluminum) and my Dad's (wood). I love the things, but had no idea somebody had built a web site and a company around them. After the zombie apocalypse, there will be no batteries and calculators won't work. But we'll be able to rebuild society with slide rules. If we can find any. RIP.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Walter was also a fixture in a small but active community of devotees of old-school HP and Tektronix test equipment, and I think he was active in 80s-era HP computer user groups as well. His storefront is still maintained by his wife: https://www.sphere.bc.ca/ https://www.sphere.bc.ca/ . Not to be missed is the 'classic' version of the site they maintained for years: https://www.sphere.bc.ca/oldsite/index.html https://www.sphere.bc.ca/oldsite/index.html
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That website is a gem. I have a 2235 here that I just can't part with, it has long since been replaced by a digital one but I'd feel like a complete traitor if I sold it.
  - tgv 3y ago
    De mortibus and all that, but their prices for slide rules are pretty high. I bought an Aristo in good conditions for €10 last month.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      That's true, but consider: there is a difference between someone selling a pile of stuff amongst which there happens to be an old slide rule versus someone specializing in slide rules. The device itself may be next to free but you're going to have to keep it in stock pretty much forever and working on the classical ones is going to be pretty time consuming. I'd see it as buying an item from a museum subsidizing the curator rather than as a purely commercial transaction. After all, even $10 is a lot of money for a piece of 30 year old plastic so there has to be something else that makes it tick. And slide rule collectors are a thing. If you just need one to use then $10 is fine, if you're looking for that one special issue with the weird scales then suddenly $200 may be acceptable, especially if you know it will sustain the world of slide rules for a couple of days longer. In dutch there is this word called 'gunnen' which I have not yet found a good English translation for, it denotes the act of allowing someone to have your business even if you know the price isn't as low as it could go because you like the person. This is a clear case of that concept.
    - pimlottc 3y ago
      > De mortibus I had to look up when this meant, I think you mean "De /mortuis/ [nil nisi bonum]" [0]? You may have thinking of a different phrase [1]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortibus_persecutorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortibus_persecutorum
      - tgv 3y ago
        You're right. I mixed up words (death, dead/deceased).
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  In a post-catastrophe society that totally destroys our networks, knowledge is so dispersed and so many computers and electricity generation mechanisms exist, that I find it impossible to believe Wikipedia and a library of ebooks won’t be preserved in some fashion. From that point it’s a land rush to establish new companies and factories to get us back to prior glory.
- bitwize 3y ago
  I'll be ready to go for the apocalypse too. I recently scored an abacus at an antique shop -- a Japanese soroban that looks like it was made in the 50s or 60s. I call it the most retro piece of computing equipment I own.
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    I love the fancy Japanese abacus I bought at a thrift shop, it's very nice and simply elegant. I also really enjoyed learning to use it, it was surprisingly easy. I also really have enjoyed learning more about "abacus culture". There are students so good with them that they don't even need abacus' anymore. They just use "air abacus'"
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      The brain will really never cease to amaze me, that's a very interesting story. So they have internalized the abacus to the point that it's entire state is present in their head. I wonder how long they can maintain that state and if they are able to mentally put it aside for a while, perform another calculation and then recall the stored one. I've seen a similar thing with a really good chess player friend of mine, he could play without actually looking at the board.
    - WillAdams 3y ago
      Similarly, there is a Korean counting system, Chisanbop, which works quite well up to 99: https://sciencing.com/finger-math-basic-addition-counting-4861020.html https://sciencing.com/finger-math-basic-addition-counting-48...
- chongli 3y ago
  My solar Casio will keep working after the zombie apocalypse: no batteries in it. Works great, even in low light conditions.
divbzero 3y ago
Does anyone have recommendations for what to look for when buying a slide rule? Are there certain features or materials that make it easier to use?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That it wasn't used daily by an engineer in anger, you want one that isn't worn to the point where the accuracy suffers. A slide rule is a precision instrument, the cursor and the scales should be free of scratches, the cursor should slide freely but without play across the outside ways and the slides themselves should slide with some friction but never so much that you need to apply force. Low quality ones may have discolored to the point that using them is harder, the better quality ones came in a cover and should have been stored there. I'd probably avoid wood as the base material, it's too unpredictable. Dirt is fine, damage is not and slop is to be avoided. In Europe Aristo made nice and affordable ones that sold in a hard plastic casing, if you can find one of those in the original sleeve it should be fine even if it has been sitting for three decades or more. Other good brands: Faber-Castell, Ahrend, Hemmi. You can find them for $10 or less if you look around for a bit. In the USA 'Pickett sliderule' on ebay, from $5 to $300 for NIB...
- kurthr 3y ago
  I am no damn expert, but I've used them. If you're actually going to use it: Choose a size that you can read and fits in your hands Choose a smooth sliding Indicator (some have magnifiers) and Slider without slop Choose scales you'll use (typ 2 linear and 2 log, some have trig roots etc) Choose one with the precision you think you'll need I think most of them are plastic, but some feel better in the hands. There are of course metal, wood, and I think ivory. There are cylindrical ones, and all sorts of historical examples. If you're going to carry it around you'll want a case (or a pocket protector) to put it in.
jacquesm 3y ago
Coincidentally I'm making one right now. I never knew about Walter and his passion but I totally get it, sliderules have a magic all their own. Ostensibly just a couple of passive pieces of material but the power of logarithms turns them into universal calculators. A radio amateur that I knew was faster with his slide rule than I ever was with a calculator! The calculator produced more digits but most of those were useless.
- mixedmath 3y ago
  That's super cool! What are you making it out of? I always wondered how they made the markings on the high quality slide rules of yore. Were they engraved? Were there machines that would scribe them? Now we might laser engrave, but that feels too recent. Maybe some sort of acid etching? I don't know!
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    For now out of wood, it will be 'oversized' so I get enough accuracy because I can only inscribe 0.4 mm lines, though I have an idea on how to improve on that for just this job. The ones that I used to have were plastic and the lettering seemed to have been superimposed on top of the base material, Pickett's were definitely printed, not engraved. But older ones were engraved and I'm super curious about the process they used, I'm imagining a reversed pantograph or something like that.
- euroderf 3y ago
  > but most of those were useless. Has anyone ever made a calculator that manages significant digits ? Edit: I mean, if (e.g.) both inputs to a binary operation have 5 digits of which only 3 are significant, then does said calculator grok this.
  - SonOfLilit 3y ago
    My high school Casio had eleven significant digits. You just wouldn't know it unless you read the manual.
hilbert42 3y ago
I'm so sorry Walter Shawlee is no longer with us, we need advocates and enthusiasts like him to carry on historical knowledge of practices and traditions especially so when they were so deeply embedded in engineering culture as was the slide rule. As I type this my Faber Castell Novo-Duplex 2/83N slide rule is sitting on my lap—it's same model as shown in the article and prised by Walter Shawlee. I still use it regularly as it's often quicker than using a calculator. Also, it has one great advantage over a calculator in that its scales are visual and often I can look along them to read off multiple solutions to a problem without even having to reposition the slide. That is, it has properties that not even calculators have. This 2/83N is also a prised possession of mine, it used to belong to my mechanical engineer father who bought it in the 1960s. It's a wonderful tool and it's in still perfect condition along with its case, instructions and its quick reference table (shame I can't post a photo of it here). I believe tools of this quality have historical value and I—as its temporary custodian—have a duty to look after it carefully.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Some lines from 'The Dark Tower' spring to mind, your dad would no doubt be very proud of you. I hope my kids will value my tool collection in the way you do. I have very few hard connections to the past of my family, and those I keep close to me. Now the challenge will be to convince your children if you have any to keep that slide-rule in honor, I really like your view of tools. Too often they are seen as 'wear items' rather than as things to last for much longer than a single life time.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    He has not forgotten the face of his father :) In a similar vein, my father came from a generation a little after the commenters to where he used HP calculators in college and later got an HP15c when he graduated. I bought one of the re-released ones and learned to use it just to have a better understanding of the engineering culture he came from. Those old calculators were stack based (RPN) and programmable in a day when practically nobody had a personal computer, so you could often do your assignments on it, instead of waiting in line to do it in Fortran. I think he lucked out and fully missed the punch card era to where they had terminals by that point. The manuals on the HP15c were also fantastic and had lots of example problems like a mini textbook.
seoulbigchris 3y ago
Sad to hear this. I bought quite a few slide rules from the years from him. I even had an outstanding wish-list (of one) for a particular circular slide rule I had been dreaming to own.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  It might be worth naming it here, it may just be that someone on HN has one lying around.
ZeljkoS 3y ago
https://archive.ph/r0uuX https://archive.ph/r0uuX
Pinus 3y ago
This is probably slightly irrational, but it pains me to see how many slide rules go unsold at auction sites, and probably end up being thrown away. Admittedly, most of these are school rules of which there are thirteen in a dozen, but I see a fair number of nice ones as well. The collector in me wants to buy them all, but the rational Pinus says that I already have a few, and unlike the gentleman in the article, I do not wish to fill my home with slide rules... To put a programming angle on things: Using a slide rule feels a bit like assembly-language programming on something like the Z80. Since operations can only take their input from certain places, and only leave their output at certain places, you need to try to arrange things so that any intermediate results are in a place where they can be used as input for the next step.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  You're lucky, you have that with slide rules. I have it with musical instruments, specifically pianos. It's been the subject of some domestic friction ;) I'm pretty sure if I would switch to slide rules that the reaction would be one of great relief.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kjellsbells 3y ago
    You've just given me an idea for a slide rule that takes a key and provides easy visuals for the chords around that key and how to translate to another key. Eg "oh if you started on c maj bit you wanna play that in F? You're gonna need these sharps and flats my man". Might be a fun educational tool for learners.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Now you've done it :) I have been thinking about this and an email exchange with another HN'er about a super interesting project pretty much non-stop! Thank you though, what an outstanding idea.
- 3y ago
Tycho 3y ago
The famous real estate developer Gerald D Hines used a slide rule constantly - it gave him time to think of answers to questions while clients watched him go through the motions of some calculation. It also helped him quickly do actual sums to scope out the major dimensions and costs of a project, further impressing clients. This was before pocket calculators, of course, but slide rules were probably more mesmerising to watch in action anyway.
- dylan604 3y ago
  One of my favorite scenes is from Apollo 13 where Jim asks Houston to confirm his numbers he calculated by hand, then it cuts to all of mission control using their slide rules to confirm his results.
slowhand09 3y ago
That's sad and unfortunate. Experts and dealers of such equipment are a dissapearing breed. I have 2 slide rules; a super cheap plastic unit from high school days, and a full-sized Dietzgen I bought for a dollar (leather case and all). It was in a junked car at a pick'nPull yard. My skills have gotten very rusty, so now I prefer my HP-15c handheld or my HP-42c emulators on my iPhone.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  I inherited a small collection of them and have no idea what to do with them. I have no interest in keeping them but throwing them away seems wrong.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    Yeah, I occasionally have that problem -- I don't want to be the custodian of these items with minor collect-ability, they aren't particularly valuable (to have an easy market to get them into the hands of someone who does), but I also don't want to be the person to just discard little bits of history.
- cafard 3y ago
  Last weekend I was on a block where a store probably has them, and I didn't think to stop in. Shoot.
asdefghyk 3y ago
A related tool ( to slide rules - a way to make multiplication and division easier ) I recall using logs to do calculatios. I recall using the lookup table booklet of logs Log tables for multiplying and dividing ie From Google of phrase "....using log tables ..." 1900s.org https://www.1900s.org.uk https://www.1900s.org.uk › logarithms Logarithms provide an easy means of multiplying and dividing using just simple addition and subtraction together with lookup tables.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  My older sibling and I spanned the boundary between lookup tables and calculators. Her math exams came with booklets of sin and cos and log tables. Mine didnt because I was expected to use a calculator. I think the tables all evaporated in under two years around 1984 (or maybe thats just as far back as I can recall)
- makeset 3y ago
  Once the Great Flood was over, Noah let all the animals off the Ark, and told them to go forth and procreate. And so they did, except the snake couple. So Noah made some wooden furniture for them, and thus the snakes were able to procreate. You know, because the snakes were adders. They needed log tables to multiply.
sn9 3y ago
I've long wondered why people haven't started milling or 3D-printing slide rules. All the good used ones seem to be extremely expensive for some pieces of plastic. Surely we could do better?
- sohkamyung 3y ago
  I found this at Instructables: "Slide Rule for the Modern Day" [1] https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-Day/ https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-Day/

141 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

I still have my old slide rule (aluminum) and my Dad's (wood). I love the things, but had no idea somebody had built a web site and a company around them. After the zombie apocalypse, there will be no batteries and calculators won't work. But we'll be able to rebuild society with slide rules. If we can find any. RIP.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Walter was also a fixture in a small but active community of devotees of old-school HP and Tektronix test equipment, and I think he was active in 80s-era HP computer user groups as well. His storefront is still maintained by his wife: https://www.sphere.bc.ca/ https://www.sphere.bc.ca/ . Not to be missed is the 'classic' version of the site they maintained for years: https://www.sphere.bc.ca/oldsite/index.html https://www.sphere.bc.ca/oldsite/index.html
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That website is a gem. I have a 2235 here that I just can't part with, it has long since been replaced by a digital one but I'd feel like a complete traitor if I sold it.
- tgv 3y ago
  De mortibus and all that, but their prices for slide rules are pretty high. I bought an Aristo in good conditions for €10 last month.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That's true, but consider: there is a difference between someone selling a pile of stuff amongst which there happens to be an old slide rule versus someone specializing in slide rules. The device itself may be next to free but you're going to have to keep it in stock pretty much forever and working on the classical ones is going to be pretty time consuming. I'd see it as buying an item from a museum subsidizing the curator rather than as a purely commercial transaction. After all, even $10 is a lot of money for a piece of 30 year old plastic so there has to be something else that makes it tick. And slide rule collectors are a thing. If you just need one to use then $10 is fine, if you're looking for that one special issue with the weird scales then suddenly $200 may be acceptable, especially if you know it will sustain the world of slide rules for a couple of days longer. In dutch there is this word called 'gunnen' which I have not yet found a good English translation for, it denotes the act of allowing someone to have your business even if you know the price isn't as low as it could go because you like the person. This is a clear case of that concept.
  - pimlottc 3y ago
    > De mortibus I had to look up when this meant, I think you mean "De /mortuis/ [nil nisi bonum]" [0]? You may have thinking of a different phrase [1]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortibus_persecutorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortibus_persecutorum
    - tgv 3y ago
      You're right. I mixed up words (death, dead/deceased).
monero-xmr 3y ago
In a post-catastrophe society that totally destroys our networks, knowledge is so dispersed and so many computers and electricity generation mechanisms exist, that I find it impossible to believe Wikipedia and a library of ebooks won’t be preserved in some fashion. From that point it’s a land rush to establish new companies and factories to get us back to prior glory.
bitwize 3y ago
I'll be ready to go for the apocalypse too. I recently scored an abacus at an antique shop -- a Japanese soroban that looks like it was made in the 50s or 60s. I call it the most retro piece of computing equipment I own.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  I love the fancy Japanese abacus I bought at a thrift shop, it's very nice and simply elegant. I also really enjoyed learning to use it, it was surprisingly easy. I also really have enjoyed learning more about "abacus culture". There are students so good with them that they don't even need abacus' anymore. They just use "air abacus'"
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    The brain will really never cease to amaze me, that's a very interesting story. So they have internalized the abacus to the point that it's entire state is present in their head. I wonder how long they can maintain that state and if they are able to mentally put it aside for a while, perform another calculation and then recall the stored one. I've seen a similar thing with a really good chess player friend of mine, he could play without actually looking at the board.
  - WillAdams 3y ago
    Similarly, there is a Korean counting system, Chisanbop, which works quite well up to 99: https://sciencing.com/finger-math-basic-addition-counting-4861020.html https://sciencing.com/finger-math-basic-addition-counting-48...
chongli 3y ago
My solar Casio will keep working after the zombie apocalypse: no batteries in it. Works great, even in low light conditions.

divbzero 3y ago

Does anyone have recommendations for what to look for when buying a slide rule? Are there certain features or materials that make it easier to use?

jacquesm 3y ago
That it wasn't used daily by an engineer in anger, you want one that isn't worn to the point where the accuracy suffers. A slide rule is a precision instrument, the cursor and the scales should be free of scratches, the cursor should slide freely but without play across the outside ways and the slides themselves should slide with some friction but never so much that you need to apply force. Low quality ones may have discolored to the point that using them is harder, the better quality ones came in a cover and should have been stored there. I'd probably avoid wood as the base material, it's too unpredictable. Dirt is fine, damage is not and slop is to be avoided. In Europe Aristo made nice and affordable ones that sold in a hard plastic casing, if you can find one of those in the original sleeve it should be fine even if it has been sitting for three decades or more. Other good brands: Faber-Castell, Ahrend, Hemmi. You can find them for $10 or less if you look around for a bit. In the USA 'Pickett sliderule' on ebay, from $5 to $300 for NIB...
kurthr 3y ago
I am no damn expert, but I've used them. If you're actually going to use it: Choose a size that you can read and fits in your hands Choose a smooth sliding Indicator (some have magnifiers) and Slider without slop Choose scales you'll use (typ 2 linear and 2 log, some have trig roots etc) Choose one with the precision you think you'll need I think most of them are plastic, but some feel better in the hands. There are of course metal, wood, and I think ivory. There are cylindrical ones, and all sorts of historical examples. If you're going to carry it around you'll want a case (or a pocket protector) to put it in.

jacquesm 3y ago

Coincidentally I'm making one right now. I never knew about Walter and his passion but I totally get it, sliderules have a magic all their own. Ostensibly just a couple of passive pieces of material but the power of logarithms turns them into universal calculators. A radio amateur that I knew was faster with his slide rule than I ever was with a calculator! The calculator produced more digits but most of those were useless.

mixedmath 3y ago
That's super cool! What are you making it out of? I always wondered how they made the markings on the high quality slide rules of yore. Were they engraved? Were there machines that would scribe them? Now we might laser engrave, but that feels too recent. Maybe some sort of acid etching? I don't know!
- jacquesm 3y ago
  For now out of wood, it will be 'oversized' so I get enough accuracy because I can only inscribe 0.4 mm lines, though I have an idea on how to improve on that for just this job. The ones that I used to have were plastic and the lettering seemed to have been superimposed on top of the base material, Pickett's were definitely printed, not engraved. But older ones were engraved and I'm super curious about the process they used, I'm imagining a reversed pantograph or something like that.
euroderf 3y ago
> but most of those were useless. Has anyone ever made a calculator that manages significant digits ? Edit: I mean, if (e.g.) both inputs to a binary operation have 5 digits of which only 3 are significant, then does said calculator grok this.
- SonOfLilit 3y ago
  My high school Casio had eleven significant digits. You just wouldn't know it unless you read the manual.

hilbert42 3y ago

I'm so sorry Walter Shawlee is no longer with us, we need advocates and enthusiasts like him to carry on historical knowledge of practices and traditions especially so when they were so deeply embedded in engineering culture as was the slide rule. As I type this my Faber Castell Novo-Duplex 2/83N slide rule is sitting on my lap—it's same model as shown in the article and prised by Walter Shawlee. I still use it regularly as it's often quicker than using a calculator. Also, it has one great advantage over a calculator in that its scales are visual and often I can look along them to read off multiple solutions to a problem without even having to reposition the slide. That is, it has properties that not even calculators have. This 2/83N is also a prised possession of mine, it used to belong to my mechanical engineer father who bought it in the 1960s. It's a wonderful tool and it's in still perfect condition along with its case, instructions and its quick reference table (shame I can't post a photo of it here). I believe tools of this quality have historical value and I—as its temporary custodian—have a duty to look after it carefully.

jacquesm 3y ago
Some lines from 'The Dark Tower' spring to mind, your dad would no doubt be very proud of you. I hope my kids will value my tool collection in the way you do. I have very few hard connections to the past of my family, and those I keep close to me. Now the challenge will be to convince your children if you have any to keep that slide-rule in honor, I really like your view of tools. Too often they are seen as 'wear items' rather than as things to last for much longer than a single life time.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  He has not forgotten the face of his father :) In a similar vein, my father came from a generation a little after the commenters to where he used HP calculators in college and later got an HP15c when he graduated. I bought one of the re-released ones and learned to use it just to have a better understanding of the engineering culture he came from. Those old calculators were stack based (RPN) and programmable in a day when practically nobody had a personal computer, so you could often do your assignments on it, instead of waiting in line to do it in Fortran. I think he lucked out and fully missed the punch card era to where they had terminals by that point. The manuals on the HP15c were also fantastic and had lots of example problems like a mini textbook.

seoulbigchris 3y ago

Sad to hear this. I bought quite a few slide rules from the years from him. I even had an outstanding wish-list (of one) for a particular circular slide rule I had been dreaming to own.

jacquesm 3y ago
It might be worth naming it here, it may just be that someone on HN has one lying around.

ZeljkoS 3y ago

https://archive.ph/r0uuX https://archive.ph/r0uuX

Pinus 3y ago

This is probably slightly irrational, but it pains me to see how many slide rules go unsold at auction sites, and probably end up being thrown away. Admittedly, most of these are school rules of which there are thirteen in a dozen, but I see a fair number of nice ones as well. The collector in me wants to buy them all, but the rational Pinus says that I already have a few, and unlike the gentleman in the article, I do not wish to fill my home with slide rules... To put a programming angle on things: Using a slide rule feels a bit like assembly-language programming on something like the Z80. Since operations can only take their input from certain places, and only leave their output at certain places, you need to try to arrange things so that any intermediate results are in a place where they can be used as input for the next step.

jacquesm 3y ago
You're lucky, you have that with slide rules. I have it with musical instruments, specifically pianos. It's been the subject of some domestic friction ;) I'm pretty sure if I would switch to slide rules that the reaction would be one of great relief.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  You've just given me an idea for a slide rule that takes a key and provides easy visuals for the chords around that key and how to translate to another key. Eg "oh if you started on c maj bit you wanna play that in F? You're gonna need these sharps and flats my man". Might be a fun educational tool for learners.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Now you've done it :) I have been thinking about this and an email exchange with another HN'er about a super interesting project pretty much non-stop! Thank you though, what an outstanding idea.
3y ago

Tycho 3y ago

The famous real estate developer Gerald D Hines used a slide rule constantly - it gave him time to think of answers to questions while clients watched him go through the motions of some calculation. It also helped him quickly do actual sums to scope out the major dimensions and costs of a project, further impressing clients. This was before pocket calculators, of course, but slide rules were probably more mesmerising to watch in action anyway.

dylan604 3y ago
One of my favorite scenes is from Apollo 13 where Jim asks Houston to confirm his numbers he calculated by hand, then it cuts to all of mission control using their slide rules to confirm his results.

slowhand09 3y ago

That's sad and unfortunate. Experts and dealers of such equipment are a dissapearing breed. I have 2 slide rules; a super cheap plastic unit from high school days, and a full-sized Dietzgen I bought for a dollar (leather case and all). It was in a junked car at a pick'nPull yard. My skills have gotten very rusty, so now I prefer my HP-15c handheld or my HP-42c emulators on my iPhone.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
I inherited a small collection of them and have no idea what to do with them. I have no interest in keeping them but throwing them away seems wrong.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  Yeah, I occasionally have that problem -- I don't want to be the custodian of these items with minor collect-ability, they aren't particularly valuable (to have an easy market to get them into the hands of someone who does), but I also don't want to be the person to just discard little bits of history.
cafard 3y ago
Last weekend I was on a block where a store probably has them, and I didn't think to stop in. Shoot.

asdefghyk 3y ago

A related tool ( to slide rules - a way to make multiplication and division easier ) I recall using logs to do calculatios. I recall using the lookup table booklet of logs Log tables for multiplying and dividing ie From Google of phrase "....using log tables ..." 1900s.org https://www.1900s.org.uk https://www.1900s.org.uk › logarithms Logarithms provide an easy means of multiplying and dividing using just simple addition and subtraction together with lookup tables.

kjellsbells 3y ago
My older sibling and I spanned the boundary between lookup tables and calculators. Her math exams came with booklets of sin and cos and log tables. Mine didnt because I was expected to use a calculator. I think the tables all evaporated in under two years around 1984 (or maybe thats just as far back as I can recall)
makeset 3y ago
Once the Great Flood was over, Noah let all the animals off the Ark, and told them to go forth and procreate. And so they did, except the snake couple. So Noah made some wooden furniture for them, and thus the snakes were able to procreate. You know, because the snakes were adders. They needed log tables to multiply.

sn9 3y ago

I've long wondered why people haven't started milling or 3D-printing slide rules. All the good used ones seem to be extremely expensive for some pieces of plastic. Surely we could do better?

sohkamyung 3y ago
I found this at Instructables: "Slide Rule for the Modern Day" [1] https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-Day/ https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-Day/