Auction find

[Butch(OH)]

My Dad taught advanced math so he of course knew how to use one.. Tried to teach me but was only moderately successful and what I did know 60 years ago has mostly left me. Dad's Pickett is around here somewhere tucked away,, probably in the same box with the rotary dial telephones, LOL

 

[Steven Allen]

Have one around here somewhere. I used to know some of the rudiments, but have lost it all. By the time I got to Trig and Calc in HS, the Ti-33 was a requirement. Never got a chance to use the slide rule in college.

 

[Brown David]

Used one in high school.

It's in the tape measure, and various other measuring devices, drawer of my toolbox.

Have no idea how to use it now.

 

[Tony in SD]

You mentioned calibrating it. I didn't know they needed to be calibrated. What does that involve?

There are 4 pieces that need to align. The top & bottom need to be perfectly aligned in the same plane by loosening the screws and sliding it left or right to get the numbers on the top scale to be exactly in the same plane as the bottom scale. Then the glass slider with the line must be ecaxtly perpendicular so the line is on exactly the same number on top as the bottom. Also you need to make sure the lines/numbers on the far left & right of the slide match the lines/numbers on the top & bottom. Although not necessarily needed for accurate calculations, the top & bottom can be adjusted up & down to provide the desired tension of the slide. Too loose it will fall out. Too tight it will be hard to make accurate small adjustments.

 

[Tony in SD]

I did not know they go out of calibration either, as it’s a manual thing.

They will if you drop them.

 

[560Dennis]

Don’t forget your decimal place. Might order little too much gravel. Just saying check your work .

 

[Tony in SD]

I had one my freshman year of college, then people started to bring HP calculators to class, I had to get a calculator to keep up on the tests.

I asked for the best engineering bamboo slide rule for Christmas my senior year in high school because I knew I would need it the rest of my life. Mom actually took me to the store to help her pick out the one I needed. As with you, it didn’t take this college freshman long to see I better get a calculator if I was to keep up. However many of the professors saw calculators as a fad and had no mercy if your battery ran dead in the middle of a test. So after I bought a calculator, I still took my slide rule to tests.

 

[Tony in SD]

Don’t forget your decimal place. Might order little too much gravel. Just saying check your work .

That is also true with a calculator. Maybe even more so. Because with a slide rule you did your work on paper. With a calculator you many times don’t.

 

[kfgoeckner]

My physics teacher had a round one that fit in his shirt pocket.

 

[mrslesq]

In a box of stuff I bid on was this 1959 Pickett slide rule and case. I cleaned it up & calibrated it. Checked a few functions, sin cos log etc. Works as it should. Coincidentally the last time we went to the moon, a slide rule was used more than once to get us there and back.

Anybody else still remember how to use one?

View attachment 148254

I used one back in 1972 and 1973 in High School. I went to a local junior college part time for 4 years while farming and milking cows starting in 1985. There was a large slide rule hanging above the blackboard in the Physics room. I asked some of my fellow students if they knew what it was. They had no idea what it was. I showed them a couple of simple calculations on it. They asked "why would you use that?" I told them it was before calculators. Another friend at school whose father was a science teacher told his son how lucky he was because when he went to college he had to use a slide rule.
PS In calculus 1,2, and 3 we were only allowed to use a calculator one time when doing a section on differentiating Trig functions.

 

[MeanGene1]

I found mine in a box a couple months ago, thought cool! I played with it for about 10 minutes and was still lost lol

 

[Tony in SD]

My physics teacher had a round one that fit in his shirt pocket.

As a young pilot, I used a round one that called an E6B. I know I still have it in my flight bag but I don’t know wher my flight bag is. Lol It is too big to fit in my pocket. I doubt any pilots use them any more.

 

[plattman]

In a box of stuff I bid on was this 1959 Pickett slide rule and case. I cleaned it up & calibrated it. Checked a few functions, sin cos log etc. Works as it should. Coincidentally the last time we went to the moon, a slide rule was used more than once to get us there and back.

Anybody else still remember how to use one?

View attachment 148254

Still have a Post rule. Not used since 60s but a nice looking piece. There was a professor at Purdue who had quite a rule collection back in the day.

 

[300jk]

In a box of stuff I bid on was this 1959 Pickett slide rule and case. I cleaned it up & calibrated it. Checked a few functions, sin cos log etc. Works as it should. Coincidentally the last time we went to the moon, a slide rule was used more than once to get us there and back.

Anybody else still remember how to use one?

View attachment 148254

Don’t think I’ve ever seen one !

 

[PJH]

In a box of stuff I bid on was this 1959 Pickett slide rule and case. I cleaned it up & calibrated it. Checked a few functions, sin cos log etc. Works as it should. Coincidentally the last time we went to the moon, a slide rule was used more than once to get us there and back.

Anybody else still remember how to use one?

View attachment 148254

I passed the civil engineering slide rule test at University of Illinois in 1968. I remember having trouble with the decimal point, but regardless, I passed the test and walked away. Shortly thereafter, "pocket" calculators [add, subtract. multiply and divide] were selling for $400. The wealthy nerds were proudly wearing those $400 calculators on their belts. At the time, I was struggling to buy groceries for my young family. I managed to survive, and now I own several cheap scientific calculators that tell me absolutely everything that I need to know about geometry. I've never been on the cutting edge of technology. I'm still using a 1984 Honda three-wheeler here on the farm. And two-cylinder Deere tractors.

 

[TomA in CA]

My grandfather was a civil engineer, a slide rule was all there was in his day. I think you need to do the calculation "in your head" to come up with an estimate of the result and use the slide rule to confirm it. That helps keep track of the decimal point.

 

[DanielW]

One of my favourite movie scenes is from Apollo 13. Apparently they did a lot of consulting with the original Houston ground grew when making the film, and this was what really happened and Ron Howard wanted to put the scene in the movie: I can't remember the details of the scene - haven't seen the movie in years. But I think it was something like this: The flight controller walking into the main control room and yells, "OK folks listen up! Their oxygen is depleting at XXX rate and the CO2 is increasing at YYY rate. How long do they have, and how the hell do we get them home?". Everyone of the 50+ people in the control room picks up their slide rules and starts calculating frantically.

Because I'm in engineering and folks know I love of all things old/antiquated, folks love to give me their old slide rules. Not sure what do do with them all - have a desk drawer full of them at home. The only one I have any attachment to is my grandfather's: he was a mechanical engineer, and this was his best slide rule. Made from some wacky dense-grained bamboo because it was more stable and not subject to the same thermal expansion variance as plastic.

I also have a 8'-long, 2' wide slide rule that was a high-school teacher's prop - to hang on the blackboard and teach kids how to use a slide-rule. As a joke one time, my brother brought it into his high-school exam, laid it across the table (right over several other students' papers), and pretended like it was standard op and started to use it on his exam, and pretended to act confused when people looked at him odd.

 

[Phill Tibbetts]

As a young pilot, I used a round one that called an E6B. I know I still have it in my flight bag but I don’t know where my flight bag is. Lol It is too big to fit in my pocket. I doubt any pilots use them any more.

I've still got all my Pilot stuff here somewhere, including my logbook. I had over 600 hours when I sold my plane in the mid 90's. Sometimes I miss it but I wasn't using the plane much at the last of it. Setting is not good for an airplane.

 

[Tony in SD]

One of my favourite movie scenes is from Apollo 13. Apparently they did a lot of consulting with the original Houston ground grew when making the film, and this was what really happened and Ron Howard wanted to put the scene in the movie: I can't remember the details of the scene - haven't seen the movie in years. But I think it was something like this: The flight controller walking into the main control room and yells, "OK folks listen up! Their oxygen is depleting at XXX rate and the CO2 is increasing at YYY rate. How long do they have, and how the hell do we get them home?". Everyone of the 50+ people in the control room picks up their slide rules and starts calculating frantically.

Because I'm in engineering and folks know I love of all things old/antiquated, folks love to give me their old slide rules. Not sure what do do with them all - have a desk drawer full of them at home. The only one I have any attachment to is my grandfather's: he was a mechanical engineer, and this was his best slide rule. Made from some wacky dense-grained bamboo because it was more stable and not subject to the same thermal expansion variance as plastic.

I also have a 8'-long, 2' wide slide rule that was a high-school teacher's prop - to hang on the blackboard and teach kids how to use a slide-rule. As a joke one time, my brother brought it into his high-school exam, laid it across the table (right over several other students' papers), and pretended like it was standard op and started to use it on his exam, and pretended to act confused when people looked at him odd.

My slide rule that mom and dad bought me when I was in high school is exactly like the ones used in the movie Apollo 13.

 

[miangus]

My high school algebra teacher taught us how to use one. It got me through college, pre handheld calculators. I believe individuals trained on slide rules are better at estimating results. I have my ex-bosses' slide rule, he was a double E so it has a log-log scale.