Group Actions
Engagement
  • Author Author: dougw
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 3918 views
  • Likes 0 likes
  • Comments 5 comments
Related
Recommended

Just How Cool Is A Hemmi Slide Rule

dougw

I made an unexpected discovery the other day while purging some old dead storage. I came across a slide rule and a super 8 movie camera. At this point, these items are mostly just curiosities, but I thought I would see if I could remember how to use a slide rule and blog about it in case members would find it interesting.

If you went through engineering after 1972, you probably never needed a slide rule because calculators took over  after that.

A decent slide rule jockey could go much faster than a calculator, but that didn't stop us from all wanting a calculator. Using a slide rule requires using quite a bit of brain power to plan operations and keep track of decimal points, and making a mistake in reading the result was very common.

My slide rule skills are pretty rusty and I never got really good at it since calculators became available in my second year of university.

This fairly high end Hemmi Versalog slide rule is made of bamboo with a celluloid surface. It still works perfectly after 50 years, with a very smooth action.

How many of you remember carrying around a little booklet of trig tables, which provided more significant digits than a slide rule could?

https://youtu.be/Q0W2GLUhwWE

It was interesting to dredge up some old memories about my university days and try to recall how to operate a slide rule.

If you have any technology memories from before PCs, feel free to comment below.

Parents

  • Thank you for your year in review. I missed this post the first time around. I always enjoy nostaliga. Reading the post caused a a dormant memory synaps to fire. I went into storage to locate my Mathematical Tables. This was the only calculator permitted for matrculation exams in high school 1978.

    image

    I'm not sure of the quality of the image but below the table of contents is the published dates. First published in 1927!

    In our province students had to purchase text books from the school. If you were lucky, parents found students from previous years and purchased text books from them at a large discount. Some brown meat packing paper to cover the text book jacket and you were ready for the next year. The writing on the cover of the tables is from the previous owner. The scribbles on some of the pages look to be mine.

    My apologies for the small script. I failed to find any option in this editor to enlarge it. I thought I could do that. Looks like it another enhancement not supported across all pages.

Comment

  • Thank you for your year in review. I missed this post the first time around. I always enjoy nostaliga. Reading the post caused a a dormant memory synaps to fire. I went into storage to locate my Mathematical Tables. This was the only calculator permitted for matrculation exams in high school 1978.

    image

    I'm not sure of the quality of the image but below the table of contents is the published dates. First published in 1927!

    In our province students had to purchase text books from the school. If you were lucky, parents found students from previous years and purchased text books from them at a large discount. Some brown meat packing paper to cover the text book jacket and you were ready for the next year. The writing on the cover of the tables is from the previous owner. The scribbles on some of the pages look to be mine.

    My apologies for the small script. I failed to find any option in this editor to enlarge it. I thought I could do that. Looks like it another enhancement not supported across all pages.

Children
No Data