(j3.2006) Retro cool to go with your Fortran compiler

[Craig Dedo]

My father gave me his slide rule when I started college in the fall of 1973.  He was a
mechanical engineer and used it in his engineering work before he gave it to me.  It is a
Keuffel & Esser, with patents 1,488,686 and 1,930,852, and has a leather case.  It has
numerous scales, including trig and log scales, but I don't know what they are for any
more.  The slide rule came with an instruction booklet but I can't find it right now.

I used the slide rule in high school and my freshman year in college.  After that, I
relied only on pocket calculators.  I got my first calculator, an HP-35, as a high school
graduation gift in 1973.  I used it throughout my undergraduate years.

It took me 5 minutes to find it.  I finally found it at the back end of the top right desk
drawer, along with a lot of mechanical drafting tools I have not used in 30 years either.

Sincerely,
Craig T. Dedo
17130 W. Burleigh Place
P. O. Box 423???????????????????????? Mobile Phone:? (414) 412-5869
Brookfield, WI?? 53008-0423??? E-mail:? <craig at ctdedo.com>
USA
Linked-In:? http://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdedo


> -----Original Message-----
> From: j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org [mailto:j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org] On Behalf Of
> Miles Ellis
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 07:41
> To: fortran standards email list for J3
> Subject: Re: (j3.2006) Retro cool to go with your Fortran compiler
> 
> I think I may have had a slide rule once - I certainly remember using
> one.  But I have to admit I always preferred my trusty book of log
> tables (and all the other useful things therein).  Perhaps that was
> because I was always a mathematician and not an engineer (;-) and a
> slide rule was never particularly accurate, being only, as Jerry
> points out, accurate to 2-3 significant figures.
> 
> Which reminds me of the comment made by one of my lecturers at
> Cambridge who had a habit of dismissing what we had been taught the
> previous year as 'good enough for engineers' but not, of course, for
> mathematicians.
> 
> But I do also remember using a wonderful Bruns Viga calculating
> machine when I first started work to check the results produced by my
> computer programs.  It was a company requirement in those early days!
> 
> Miles
> 
> -----------
> On 15 Dec 2010, at 12:58, Jerry Wagener wrote:
> 
> > I too still have my slide rule, a Pickett purchased in 1955,
> > complete with leather case and belt loop  (old-timers will remember
> > the brand, and I see that the thinkgeek reference includes a link to
> > the Pickett slide rule manual). In addition to the usual dual-base
> > log log scales it has square roots, cube roots, sine, tangent (and
> > of course arc sine and arc tangent), and several more scales. A
> > precision instrument (mechanically) but, alas, one can compute with
> > it to only about two significant figures (in some cases you can
> > interpolate close to three significant figures) - guess that was
> > good enough for much early engineering work.
> >
> >    -Jerry
> >
> > On Dec 15, 2010, at 4:42 AM, Lawrie Schonfelder wrote:
> >
> >> I still have my 1950s slide rule. It was much used when I was an
> >> undergrad but then I found first a
> >> marchant desk calculator and then a computer called CIRAC (32
> >> instructions, 16 16bit Williams tube
> >> registers, 1024 16bit word mercury delay line memory, 2millisecond
> >> cycle time) and the slide rule
> >> passed into the back of the cupboard. I actually solved a PDE on
> >> the computer before moving on to a
> >> IBM 1620 with Fortran. Nostalgia!
> >>
> >> --
> >> Lawrie Schonfelder
> >> Wirral, UK
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org [mailto:j3-bounces at j3-fortran.org]On
> >>> Behalf Of Van Snyder
> >>> Sent: 14 December 2010 23:54
> >>> Subject: (j3.2006) Retro cool to go with your Fortran compiler
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Retro cool to go with your Fortran compiler.
> >>>
> >>> http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/be12/
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> J3 mailing list
> >>> J3 at j3-fortran.org
> >>> http://j3-fortran.org/mailman/listinfo/j3
> >>>
> >>> No virus found in this incoming message.
> >>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> >>> Version: 9.0.872 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3315 - Release Date:
> >>> 12/14/10 07:34:00
> >>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> J3 mailing list
> >> J3 at j3-fortran.org
> >> http://j3-fortran.org/mailman/listinfo/j3
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > J3 mailing list
> > J3 at j3-fortran.org
> > http://j3-fortran.org/mailman/listinfo/j3
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> J3 mailing list
> J3 at j3-fortran.org
> http://j3-fortran.org/mailman/listinfo/j3