[TheForge] OT slide rules

[schade at acegroup.cc]

Andy,

I sent this in as a follow up to an earlier thread about
slide rules and an even earlier thread about "gozintas"
or I think it may have been "gazintas" at the time.
Maybe it was while you were gone?

Anyway I thought it was interesting, in a cosmic way, that
two very different lists (one on "peak oil" and one on "blacksmithing")
were, within a fairly short time period, talking? about slide
rules. Even more odd was reading someone use the word
"gozinta"/"gazinta" which I had never seen written out before
recently.

Not that it matters. I just seem to have a good memory for
nonsense. No offense intended.

Bob
______


On Jan 5, 2007, at 6:45 PM, Andrew Vida 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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