Did you ever carry a slide rule in your shirt pocket?
Beats carrying an abacus in your back pocket!
26-30, F
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
I could if I still have my first slide-rule and can find it! It was an introductory type, only 6 inches long, and made by Blundell-Harling for issue in schools, in the 1960s.
Some years ago I wanted to perform a rather awkward calculation, part of a project problem in my hobby of model-engineering. I had no computer at the time, so could not use any PC-based calculator (nor of course Excel).
I could not find my calculator...,.
Ah, slide-rule, a full-length one so reasonably high-definition. B****r! Can't find that either!
Oh well, out with the text-books and revise using logarithms as times-sums tools, but which I was later to use in a scientific context elsewhere - they are NOT "obsolete".
Next day I bought a new calculator. Oddly, despite having the same functions as the lost one, it and all the others in the shop were no longer shirt-pocket size, but greatcoat-pocket dimensions. I never discovered why they were larger than hitherto when all other electronic devices were shrinking.
Looking for something else three weeks later, I opened a drawer - and there was the AWOL calculator! Sometimes I forget there are no such things as gremlins and poltergeists. After all, it can't have been me who'd put it there, and there was no-one else in the house.....
Some years ago I wanted to perform a rather awkward calculation, part of a project problem in my hobby of model-engineering. I had no computer at the time, so could not use any PC-based calculator (nor of course Excel).
I could not find my calculator...,.
Ah, slide-rule, a full-length one so reasonably high-definition. B****r! Can't find that either!
Oh well, out with the text-books and revise using logarithms as times-sums tools, but which I was later to use in a scientific context elsewhere - they are NOT "obsolete".
Next day I bought a new calculator. Oddly, despite having the same functions as the lost one, it and all the others in the shop were no longer shirt-pocket size, but greatcoat-pocket dimensions. I never discovered why they were larger than hitherto when all other electronic devices were shrinking.
Looking for something else three weeks later, I opened a drawer - and there was the AWOL calculator! Sometimes I forget there are no such things as gremlins and poltergeists. After all, it can't have been me who'd put it there, and there was no-one else in the house.....