[TheForge] Slide rules (was: Excessive scaling?)

[Bruce Freeman]

No, but I do remember what was probably the electromechanical rendition
of the same thing.  Monroe was one brand.  Big, ungainly things.

One of my favorites is a little hand calculator I still have.  It's
effectively an abacus, but uses a digital scale rather than beads.  It's
as if you glued the beads of an abacus together and wrote a number on
the top of each one.  Then, using a stylus, you advance the rack of
beads up for addition or down for subtraction.  The current "bead count"
shows up in a window.  It even allows for carrying or borrowing by a
simple motion of the stylus.  Elegant and simple.  Multiplication is
done by repeated addition.  Unfortunately, it has no provision for
division.  Worked fine for balancing a checkbook.

Bruce
NJ

>>> rsmuck at hughes.net 12/14/2006 11:23 AM >>>
Do any of you remember the rotary calculators, I knew some surveyors
who 
used them. They were also called coffee grinders, were basically a
round cyl 
1 1/2 or 2" in diameter about 3" long you dialed in a number on the
case 
then turned a handle on the end the number of times that you needed to

multiply.
Rowland of Roseburg, OR 97470