The Slide Rule and Log Tables - Are They Extinct?

Well I uh....

http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-es.html

BEAUTIFULL!!!!!

Indeed really beautiful. But I forgot to use it. I have 6" slide rule still with me.

I just broke it. The little lens thingy just slid off the end. :(

Altogether, Arrrr.

Bazzer

Solar Eagle,

I did not notic the word Simulated the first time around. Good lesson on how they work for those that do not know!

Sleepy

Interesting question.

I, for one don't know if I even have a slide rule any more. So, no.

Has the skill been lost? More than likely. Remember, they weren't really intuitive when we learned to use them.

When's the last time anybody counted your change back to you, correctly (or otherwise). Now it's usually just thrust at you in place of a "Thank you" with the hope that you'll leave soon.

Vernier calipers? Forget it.

Children are allowed to use calculators in school, now.

Anolog clocks? Who needs "em?

My biggest concern with digital doo-dads is the loss of precision that sometimes goes along with them.

Now, is this all bad? Probably not.

Hey I got a 40 inch vernier calipers that I use quite frequently. They wanted an arm and a leg at the time for digital ones. Also use a vernier depth gage. I find them more accurate and more durable then most the digital ones.

Vernier calipers? Forget it.

Would you like to use one of the many pairs I have and use (and I am Electrical predominantly)? Offered the digital type by management but turned them down.

Lets have no more of this kind of talk.

I have vernier calipers and micrometers, as well as digital.

I use digital when I don't need accuracy and am in a hurry. But if I want to know the exact diameter of something, out come the verniers.

I bought one of these not long ago as a novelty but it is surprisingly useful. I have an analogue clock & watch as I find it easier to take in the time at a glance and don't usually need second precision. Same story in cars, analogue dials are easier to assimilate than digital.

You wrote:-

Vernier calipers? Forget it.

I believe I disagree, I use vernier calipers several times a month; I even have some that are digital..... I do not believe they have been affected by the loss of Slide Rules and Log tables......

What do other people say? What do other people use then? Am I missing something?

should add abacus to that question, also. ????

that will never become extinct......

This post reminded me of a contest put on by a calculator manufacturing, back in the 70's that pitted a calculator against an abacus. The marketing guy for the calculator company didn't do much research because the abacus had won.

I could only find such a contest that was staged back in 1946.

http://www.math.twsu.edu/history/topics/calculators.html

Did you know this one?: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier's_bones.-

That's quite interesting. I learned nearly the oposite:

Yes the method I posted was backwards, probably from the Southern Hemisphere....

Nope, we don't use that form down here.

Just kidding, it's from India and used by a religious sect to count using the fingers into the hundreds....

" Fingers of the right hand count single digits (1 to 9), while those on the left indicate the 10th place (10 to 99), and together one can easily count from 1 to 99 or say, 100. e begin with the right (and left) hand fingers fully open (zero). Fold in only the little finger of the right hand to get "one", tuck in the ring finger also (keeping the little finger still tucked in) for "two", and so on sequentially till the thumb is also folded in, to give "five". From this position, open just the little finger alone to get "six" and continue sequentially till the thumb is also opened out, for 10. At this point, the little finger of the left hand is folded in and kept that way, while the right hand was already back to the initial position.

The right hand count is repeated till we get 20, at which time the left ring finger is folded in (the left little finger was already in the folded position). This process is repeated till the count is 100 (99, to be precise!).

Thus, as an example, if only the little and ring fingers of the left hand are folded, while only the little and ring fingers of the right hand are opened out, then the count is ? .... ; you are right, 27."

http://www.namboothiri.com/articles/counting.htm

No, we moved to digital digits decades ago down here

I am tempted to say, "well, yes and no, I do use logs and sines etc. but I get them from my calculator." But I won't because it isn't true. I still have the bamboo pocket sliderule and the full size Picket that I bought soon after I came to the States in '66 because my bamboo one disappeared soon after I started work.

Slide rules go for big bucks on eBay.

I am sure buyers put them in glass cabinets and keep their digital calculators on their desks.

I think that some days my local ISP is still running everything through a guy with a telegraph ticker. Does that count for anything?

How about a Curta calculator? Anyone still grinding away?

Baffled,

I had never heard of a Curta calculator before today.

Thanks for the insight

Sleepy

Even when i was at school, no teacher ever mentioned a slide ruler and back then the first LCD calculators came along, i still had one of those LED based ones, that went through batteries like crazy.

Yes, about 3 or 4 times a year, I'll grab the slide rule a quick square root calculation because it's easier than remembering the key sequence on the calculator.

But I love my pipe size flow rate to velocity slide rule and use it several times a week. In a flash I know that 100 gpm is 22 something m^3/Hr and in a 2" pipe that's between 10 and 11 feet/second. I love it.

And I use the Foxboro metric converter for pressure (I'm clueless on metric pressure, I need inches of water DP)

70kPa is a little over 10 psi or 280+ inches w.c. Whew. Lifesaver.

And on rare occasions, I even use a Daniels DP flow calculator.

I am quite glad to not have used a log table in half a century.

Be careful using log tables.Unless they are sanded smooth and finished with a good polyurethane,you can get splinters!

Probably about as many as use sextants and sight reduction tables.

Q. Has the skill been lost? A. Not completely but it will be very rare in another 15 years.

Orake,

A few years ago on a cruise we were offered a navigagtion course, Brilliant. I learned all the Spherical Trig that I needed to know over 50 years ago. But no practical usage except for the surveying work that I had used in the Middle East whilst working.

I went on the course and on the last day we were offered the chance of using a Sextant for Sun and astonomy sightings.

I was first up.was shown how to hold the sextant, and to sight the sun through it.

I was just about to get a measurement when a very large storm passsed over us, and stayed||!|

So I still am awaiting the experience!

I want to use one in anger!

Don't knock the older technologies, I am working my way through Copernicus's life and work. these things are importqant to us - it is our past.

On Slide Rules, I have two and have used the long circular ones for great accuracy.

Sleepy

Modern devices have saved time and increased accuracy of measurements & calculations. There is no room for parallax error as readings can be read on a dial/display.

I still have my E-6B flight computer with the circular sliderule. It wasn't that long ago that I effectively passed my glider check ride by breaking it out to do the weight and balance calculations. The check pilot was a former Navy P-3 Orion Flight Engineer and the fact that I even realized that the E-6B had that capability went a very long way towards winning his approval.

Congratulations on the successful check ride!

Log tables are still used in schools to solve physics, chemistry numerical as calculators are not allowed in some schools in India.

Hello Gentlemen, and add to all that my Hemmi-Sun slide-rule on the analog side and my Commodor digital calculator with its long forgottem 9V battery from high school ... Interesting world, and don't forget that part of these helped get us on (and even back from) the moon!

Great responses. Keep 'em coming!

When I was an apprentice we had to use slide rules, I still have two & a full set of logs & although I wasn't that proficient in it's use I got by, but we had a manager who used to be a maths teacher and we would have competitions with him using a slide rule and us using calculators,( no computers in those day's) He always won even the most complicated set of sums that ran into four or five lines of figures, He would just sit there barely moving then give the answerer in about half the time any one else could.

Bazzer

I learnt how to use a slide rule and log/sin/tan tables in 197n.....and then didn't use them as calculators were then introduced at school.

It was good to know though as it did put the calculator's capabilities into context. More reason less magic.

The terms ∏ and √2 are way more accurate than any mechanical or electronic approximation....and that's what we really crunched.

Slide rule is just another calculator. The tables are in the calculator too. Not missed at all.

Spread sheet is my favourite calculator.

Used vernier measuring until this century when digital calipers became real cheap and were also not prone to rusting. Flat battery is a drag .....

I have a pair of plastic vernier calipers. Good for measuring in and around live gear. Also good for jewelry...doesn't scratch the piece.

I don't wear glasses all the time so having to deploy the ocular crutches is avoided with the digital (they're actually numeric) readouts.

Very interesting and quite a coincidence. Last week I took my CRC book of mathematical tables and several engineering formula reference books home from work and considered throwing them into a fire. I haven't used these in at least 4 years. I know that because I moved from an office in one building to an office at another and just removed my remaining items from the old office last Wednesday. That's where the reference books were stored.

However a bad storm on Thursday left major portions of the local area without AC power until Monday, and then it hit me - if there is a major black-out, the computer reference may not be available. I used the car battery to recharge my computer every 2 hours or so. What a pain. I will keep the reference books until the day I go into the old folks home just in case.

Phys:

Whatever you do do not throw them away!

If there is no other home for them, just send them to me!

I am short of ten figure tables at this moment and I have never, personally had 12 or 15 figure tables, although these were generally? available at work, says my fading memory.

And I have bought, over the years, some 6 sets of Kaye & Labey books ( Reference books: Physical constants) came in very handy during work years but they kept on vanishing! If anyone has a set of these doing nothing - PLEASE DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY - I will pay postage to acquire them!

I see tonight that the National Physical Laboratory - NPL has put the full contents onto the web! See http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/

There is an interesting introduction on the history opf this tome and its relevance to a number of institiouns across the world.

Also the full contents are there.

On the vernier isssuues that folk have mentioned.

I used Micrometers first, Slip Gauges next and only recently Verniers.

Slip Gauges are extremely useful and can provide measured blocks in 1 thousandths of an inch steps from the lowest size all the way to whatever you want to pay in steps of 1 thousandths of an inch. They are also available in millimetre sizes.

You really need a good Surface Plate and height gauge to set them up properly andtransfer the Slip gauge height to the article to be set..

As my eye sight starts to fail I will have to use Digital Verniers with Electronic Read out - I have just this year been bought my first set and it is so much easier to make measurements"! As long as I do not believe the last figure all the time!

Sleepy

Napier's bones are very practical way...

You didn't give me a chance to look it up.

I have recalled back in gammar school of being shown this or atleast something simular, but I could not remember the name.

A picture results more interesting to the others among the miriad of posts (when so, i just follow the links and figures..).Lucky if somebody taught you at school! there is several improved versions of, see them "wiking"

I didn't say they taught me, if I remember correctly, I was lost. But I recall them saying it is easier........

My father sometimes uses his slide rule, even though he has a difficult time seeing the small numbers. He has several sliding rules and takes great care of them. He says that with the calculator you do not understand the fundaments of the operation you are doing and the "engineer sense" is lost. I agree with him.

He taught me how to use it when I was 9 or 10 years old, but I forgot when I began using the calculator .

I still have the one that was issued to me in 1959 when I entered Kings Point. I also have a round pocket slide rule that I acquired sometime in the 70's. After my father-in-law passed away I got his. My wife saw the three in my bookcase and asked why I had 3 slide rules that I never used. Nostalgia says me. Excess baggage says she. So I reached in and took out her father's and placed it in the waste basket. Why are you throwing that one out says she. Because it's your father's and really has no sentimental value to me, the other two do. I asked why she had put some baby shoes in my bookcase. They will never fit our kids again and that's only excess baggage says I. Later on I saw that her father's slide rule was back in the bookcase next to the baby shoes.

Besides, there's always the possibility that some sunspot activity will send some huge electro-magnetic pulse to Earth knocking out all electrical generation and I might need to reach into that bookcase, retrieve one of those slide rules and attempt to perform some calculation on how to restart the electrical systems.

I learned to use a slide rule in school and they kindly sold us a basic Helix model for 30p. Around 1975 a calculator was available and I used to stop off at Dixons in Union Street in the centre of Birmingham and use the theirs to do my maths homework on They used to retail for more than £5 for a battery powered version which was 1/3 of my take home pay just two years later. I bought a slide rule on ebay a couple of years ago and by coincidence was showing it to my son (7) just yesterday, I will wait for the next showing. I bought cheap digital verniers from Aldi but they all failed and I have resorted to the conventional sort (I have a bench magnifier to solve the reading problem). I do not miss log tables but I recall the Zeus guide for marking out uses the sine function when most kids today have never seen a set of tables. Each day I use Excel and am always impressed. I can get Zeus as pdf on my e-reader, find an app for many things, use wikipedia and the net to find info on any engineering topic and if that fails I can come here and ask. I don't miss them but it is astonishing how far we have come. btw my first thought (coming in late to this thread was the wonderful site posted by solar eagle, I discovered it years ago - I saved the web page and can use it off line).

http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Cleo-Messograf-Pen.html

seen this?

If you still have the cheap verniers, remove the battery and put it to one side for at least 24 hours.

Then put a brand new battery in, one you have checked with a meter, you may find that it works again.

Never store with the battery installed, its fatal......mostly!

"http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Cleo-Messograf-Pen.html

seen this?"

I think I saw it in my post #30.

On a similar theme, machinetools now almost all come with digital readouts instead of calibrated thimbles.

I still have my K&E Log, Log, duplex disitrig 10" slide rule. It has yellowed a bit and the strap on the leather case has broken off (age). I can still use it for simple x & /, but I forget the rest of it's functions. I also have a K&E planimeter, I used for area computations when doing tank capacities. Today I rely on the electronic calculator for all my computations. Like riding a bicycle; you never forget. As a mental exercise, I still run numbers through my head without benefit of calculators. BTW, I have one of the first digital calculators on the market. It was sold under the name of "Summit". It was rechargable and had a LED display. It sold for $99. I also have a Sharp ELSI-803 desktop calculator that is around 42 years old and still in use every day. That also cost $99.

When it comes to digital vs vernier calipers, I use both. I have an el-cheapo 6" digital caliper, but all my other calipers, gages and micrometers are all vernier. I trust the vernier over the digital. When I turn on my digital caliper, I first zero it before taking a reading. When I return the caliper to zero, it will pick up a .0005 or .001 and I have to zero it again. Because of that, I don't have confidence in the digital instrument. Of course my eyesight is great after two cataract surgeries 20 years ago.

Older than dirt.

I have 2 or 3. I don't use them anymore, but I wouldn't get rid of them. I learned to use them when I was in the "Slide Rule Club" at my H.S. We had "Meets," with other schools in our district and then at the state level if you were good enough to qualify. I never made it to the state level competition, but I have very fond memories of the club, the meets and the field trips to the meets.

During my engineering study in college about 39 years back, I used sliderule ,log table,trigonometric table etc. for engineering calculations and kept these with me. Now my son is studying engineering and for engineering calculations using calculator ,other electronic gadgets.Whlie I am showing him the sliderule and its operation, other engineering tables like logtable etc. he is feeling very funny about it.

Thanks,

Manindra.

Next time he tells you how easy you had it, take away his computer/calculator, hand him all those and have him solve some of his homework with them.

With the sliderule, I got usable answers for structural engineering calculations but the computer sends me thirteen decimal places and I have the extra work of rounding down to the two, three or four significant figures that I need.

Surely you can do that with 95% of your brain switched off.......or do you find it really difficult?

Maybe I am missing something.....

Have a great day anyway....

The meaning and importance of Significant Figures was part of learning the slip stick. I often have to stop otherwise intelligent engineers and work to help them understand that, just because their calulators give them 10 digit long answers, that the last 6 or 7 digits are just noise, not true signal.

Still have my grandfather's K+E and a big Aristo Hyperbolog... not in use anymore but nice to show to the kids.

My favorite calculator is the spreadsheet, too. Numeric readouts are nice for guys not wearing glasses all the time, but some displays are too small (or arms too short).

Some "engineering sense" has been lost, especially referring to excess significant digits.

Still like to do some reckoning in my head, e. g. metric conversions using the "binch". It's a (binary) rounding off 25.4 mm to 25.6 mm; so take 1/16" = 1.6 mm, 1/8"=3.2 mm and so on.

About finger counting, you can count to 1023 on your fingers!

Dear Mr. PWSlack,

The SLIDE RULE and PRINTED TABLE (CLARK'S Table) now a days, no one uses.

The present generation Engineers seeing Slide Rule with curiosity. I still preserve the slide rule, Clark's Table and remembering to use.

In the same way, now days - we do not get Stenos who takes dictation writing in short hand and 80 to 90 words per minute is considered to be the best stenographer.

We do not get short hand book also and to my knowledge only one book for short hand - author Mr. Pitman, known as Pitman's Short Hand Book, was available, and the Publishers were ORIENTAL LONG MAN PRESS, LONDON.

I learnt short hand to some extent, learnt upto "DIPTHONG" but left out as timings were not matching to my work.

I hope other CR4 MEMBERS will post their experience and views.

Thanks,

DHAYANANDHAN.S

Short hand evolved.........it's called texting now.

Dear Mr. phoenix911,

Thank you for your information. May I request you to post further information on TEXTING.

Thanks,

DHAYANANDHAN.S

Short hand could be still used by typists/secretaries in offices.May be forgotten due to "out of fashion".Nowadays in offices executives are forced to do typing & waste their useful time due to absence of short hand or steno typists.

I needed to do some calculations using some trig or log or some such functions and I discovered my scientific calculator was missing. I started hunting... and hunting... and hunting... There was not a scientific calculator to be found. I could find 4 function calcs all over though. I THEN remembered a slide rule tucked away in a box. I dug it out and ran my calculations... snickering all the way... because I am the only one in the household who knows how to use one. I would not have to worry about IT vanishing into the woodwork.

Bill