Re: slide rule (OT) was: Question on backups using rsync

[Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com>]

Richard Lyons wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 December 2005 at 12:50:15 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
>
> > Gene Heskett wrote:
> >
> > > On Tuesday 20 December 2005 20:35, Daniel Webb wrote:
> > >
> > > > (pulls out my slide ruler to figure out when it's dinner time).
> > >
> > >
> > > Thats properly called a slide rule.  I still have one, a K&E 
> > > log-log-deci-trig that still works just fine.  Does that make me a 
> > > little jurassic, and probably old enough to be your grandfather?  Yup.
> >
> > I *made* my first slide rule out of a manila folder, following
> > directions in a book called "The Fun of Mathematics" (IIRC).
>
>
> That was a good book.  I never made a slide rule but I still have a
> couple somewhere.  Hemmi bamboo slide rules were the best.  Come to
> that, I have a couple of lovely sorobans too, but I don't use them very
> often either.
>
> Another old fogie...
Mine is a Pickett log-log slide rule and I used to carry it aound in its
case hanging from my belt like a sword before I replaced it with an HP
25 RPN programmable calculator that cost $195.  It had 8 memories, 49
program steps and a 4 number stack.  The calculator is long since dead,
but I still have the slide rule.  I also still have the applications
manual for the calculator and I wrote an interpreter for the HP 25
language in C for a class when I went back to school for a second degree
-- in CS.  I guess I'm Jurassic, too -- and a geek!

--
Marc Shapiro
mshapiro_42@yahoo.com



--
Marc Shapiro
mshapiro_42@yahoo.com