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

[Mike]

> 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.

That wouls be the Curta, right?  Never had one but I was always
intrigued by the ads in Scientific American.  They're now hot
collectibles.  See http://www.curta.org/

And you might want to read William Gibson's _Pattern Recognition_, in
which a Curta is the key to figuring out that... well, you have to
read the book. ;-)

Somewhere I have.. had?... a nice K&E sliderule in a belt holster but
I haven't been able to find it for years.  I keep hoping it'll turn
up.  I got it out of the trunk of a junked car that came into the
place I was working in 1968.  I was the only guy in the shop that knew
how to use it so I got it.  The reliable but tacky-looking plastic
sliderule that got me through school has vanished, too.  Grump.



- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^