[TheForge] OT slide rules

[Jerry Smith]

Gee, I used to have both the traditional straight
slide rule and a circular one, both good for doing the
math that put a "man on the moon", I think.

Back in that era, we had Frieden mechanical
calculators that were good out to many decimal places.
A few years before me, in the Battleships of WW II,
they had mechanical calculators/computers way up in
the crows nest that they could do ballastic ranging
with those machines. I saw that on the History
Channel.

It's really funny, why use the slide rule or the
abacus, pencil and paper works really well also.

In the time of the early space program, their were
electronic computers, Burrows and IBM. Banks had been
using them for a while.

Jerry


--- Andrew Vida <osan at netlabs.net> wrote:

> I suppose it depends on the task at hand.  We did,
> after all, put men on 
> the moon by engineering craft with the slide rule. 
> This is not to take 
> anything away from the abacus, a righteous
> calculating machine in its 
> own right.
> 
> schade at acegroup.cc wrote:
> > 
> > this just came up on another list I read. slide
> rules and gozinta.........
> > 
> > Bob
> > ___________
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > My two cents on slide rules: They are great for
> APPROXIMATE answers to
> > a few decimal places. BUT, for real accuracy,
> especially in commercial
> > and trade applications you really need an abacus.
> They have many, many
> > more significant digits of accuracy than a slide
> rule. And when
> > trading pounds of corn for bags of nails you don't
> really need square
> > roots and logarithms just the basic four: plus,
> minus, times and gozinta.
> > 
> > --gary where the Willamette meets the McKenzie in
> Orygun, US of A.
> 
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