Thread: Slide Rules Anyone??

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

Does anybody have one of those six foot classroom demo slide rules?

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 .
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 .

Tony

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

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

Good lord, slide rulers... That is like if some started collecting, say, old straight razors.

Nenad

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

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