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Jim,
I would think that most of us that originally went through school using those things probably have a similar problem. I worked in electronics and at one time I would read the lettering on film resistors (RN55c...). It got to a point where I always carried a magnifing glass.
Rick
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Does anybody have one of those six foot classroom demo slide rules?
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Rick,
Those little number are tough. A few makers, K&E in particular made a magnifier to go over the cursour so old farts like me could read them <g>.
I just got an old Texas Instruments SR-10 which was TI's first "slide rule" calculator. Introduced in 1972 I think, it had the numbers, a clear button, square root, square and memory button.....that's it, and all for $149.95 when new. My 34 year old working example was $4.99 and has the tiniest little red LEDs which I can barely see.
As for the big teaching ones they turn up on eBay each week and usualy bring arould $100 or so. I don't even dare bring one of those home <g>.
Tony
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Tony,
The magnifiers were there so that you could more accurately approximate the last digit. I had a 6" Pickett that I used on one test. I went to a 12" because one of my profs required better accuracy.
I remember the early TI units. One of them could do statistics. I also seem to remember that the readouts on the HP-35 and the LED watches (1975?) were on the order of 0.1 inches.
Rick
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Rick,
Some of the financial calculators were the warly ones with the slide rule models a close second. It was HP who killed the slide rule with the HP-35, a $400 monster that was the first real slide rule calculator. I had the HP-85 (I think) that did vectors much easier than the TI but in that day you were cool if you owned the TI instead.
That was way back when in a other life........today I'm lucky if I can balance my checkbook let alone vectors.
BTW, the eBay slide rule sellers are not much different that the thieving bas&^%%s that sell "mint" razors. I got a few worthless, yet "mint" slide rules there lately. Maybe it's an eBay thing in general.
Tony
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Good lord, slide rulers... That is like if some started collecting, say, old straight razors.
Nenad
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Just in case anyone gets the urge to want to play with one of these I am selling a few spares/duplicates from my collection on eBay this week. All in the $10-$25 range but I will gladly sell direct first.
Tony
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next time my wife rags on me about "collecting" razors, I'll tell her that it could be worse...I could be collecting slide rules lol :)