Thread: Slide Rules Anyone??

Just wanted to mention one of my other vices.....vintage slide rules. I have a small collection of them dating from the 1930's till their very end in the early 1970's. I got a few from older engineers I worked with over the years and many come from eBay, estate sales and flea markets.
I'm always looking for ones I don't have and would either buy them or trade strops, etc....
On a more modern note I also have a few old Texas Instruments red LED scientific calculators.

Anyone here ever use these in the past?

Tony

My freshman year at Texas A&M (1973-74), my roomate received the first HP calculator (HP-35) from his dad - it cost $625!

I bought one the following year for half that amount.

Although HP still only makes a couple, I'll never give up on using Reverse Polish Notation calculators!!!!!

I've got one around somewhere. Back in '84 in high school, I was carrying it around in my backpack playing around with it and was on my way to my physics final and dropped my TI calculator and smashed it to bits. I wound up taking the final using the slide rule. Made an 'A' too. My first day at Texas A&M I bought an HP 41C calculator. I still use it frequently, and it's still on the original batteries. That thing is a tank.

I believe that Tony H may have some and may even be dealing in'em. Make sure you ask him.

Now I really feel old. I used one not only in high school, but also when I was an electrical draftsman for GE before my military days. I used to draw transformers, lightning arrestors, and reclosers and used a slide rule for a ton of calculations.

I think I'd be lucky how to remember the process for multiplication on one of them these days.

I know I have about 4 or 5 around somewhere, one of them being ivory. They are in a box somewhere in the garage. Finding them is another story. Got to be over a thousand boxes inside other boxes in other boxes after our move.

If I run across them, I'll give you a jingle...

My freshman year (9th grade), my Science teacher, Mr. McDowell, had a slide rule that hung on the wall. It was huge, the kind of slide rule that JL would lust after!

He would give us problems to solve, and work out the solution on that big slide rule as fast or faster than we could with calculators.

Now that I think about Mr. McDowell, he was the kind of guy who would have used a straight razor. RIP!

RT

Originally Posted by mparker762

I've got one around somewhere. Back in '84 in high school, I was carrying it around in my backpack playing around with it and was on my way to my physics final and dropped my TI calculator and smashed it to bits. I wound up taking the final using the slide rule. Made an 'A' too. My first day at Texas A&M I bought an HP 41C calculator. I still use it frequently, and it's still on the original batteries. That thing is a tank.

Of course, I took all my exams with a slide rule. It was fun to use, but it was too easy to make an error in decimal places.

Originally Posted by Tony Miller

Just wanted to mention one of my other vices.....vintage slide rules. I have a small collection of them dating from the 1930's till their very end in the early 1970's. I got a few from older engineers I worked with over the years and many come from eBay, estate sales and flea markets.
I'm always looking for ones I don't have and would either buy them or trade strops, etc....
On a more modern note I also have a few old Texas Instruments red LED scientific calculators.

Anyone here ever use these in the past?

Tony

I used a K&E log-log decitrig in college and in an earlier life, when I was an engineer. I still have. Just to give you an idea how long agp that was, it was the only way to do computing. We didn't even have basic electronic calculators.

A cheap scientific calculator has orders of magnitude more power than the slide rule and almost as much more power than the first computer I used without punching cards, the GE time sharing terminal.

I see them by the dozens at the Antique fairs and carboots, they are quite common in England.
If you want something specific PM me and I will keep an eye out Cost & postage only.
Tony

Originally Posted by Tony Miller

Just wanted to mention one of my other vices.....vintage slide rules. I have a small collection of them dating from the 1930's till their very end in the early 1970's. I got a few from older engineers I worked with over the years and many come from eBay, estate sales and flea markets.
I'm always looking for ones I don't have and would either buy them or trade strops, etc....
On a more modern note I also have a few old Texas Instruments red LED scientific calculators.

Anyone here ever use these in the past?

Tony

Originally Posted by Joe Lerch

... but in real life you're an old guy, like me.

Like everyone of the day, I used my slide rule a lot in college to do the calculations we had to do... but the conversion tables insert that came with the Dietzgen has proved useful throughout my life... [pic here] ... today my slide rule is tucked away in storage, but that conversion table is in my desk drawer for handy reference.