Why a slide rule is better than a computer

[BobG]

Why a slide rule and pad of paper is better than a computer

1. A Slide Rule doesn't shut down abruptly when it gets too hot.

2. One hundred people all using Slide Rules and Paper Pads do not start wailing and screaming simultaneously due to a single-point failure (on the other hand, 100 people using slide rules don't get to have office chair races in the parking lot).

3. A Slide Rule doesn't smoke whenever the power supply hiccoughs.

4. A Slide Rule doesn't care if you smoke, or hiccough.

5. You can spill coffee on a Slide Rule; in fact, you can use a Slide Rule while completely submerged in coffee.

6. You never get nasty machine fault messages.

7. A Slide Rule and Paper Pad fit in a briefcase with space left over for lunch.

8. You don't get junk mail from Keuffel & Esser offering pricey software upgrades that fix current floating point errors while introducing new ones.

9. A Slide Rule doesn't need scheduled hardware maintenance.

10. A Paper Pad supports text and graphics images easily, and can be easily upgraded from monochrome to color.

11. Slide Rules are designed to a standardized, open architecture.

12. A Slide Rule is immune to viruses, worms, and other depredations from hostile adolescents with telephones.

13. Additional Paper Pads can be integrated into the system seamlessly and without needing to reconfigure everything.

14. You don't have to make payments to own one.

15. Most importantly, nobody will make you feel bad by introducing a smaller, faster, cheaper slide rule next month.

By the way, is there anyone who has actually enjoyed breaking in a new TI-89? Are those the most user hostile device ever invented or do I just know dumb people? (kind of like Microsoft upgrades - when you hear coworkers screaming in agony, you tend to put off upgrading your own computer as long as possible).

Edit: You would be shocked to learn what forum I got this list from.

 

[rachmaninoff]

Integrated circuits are faster than dead lumps of tree.

 

[chroot]

I have a TI-89, and it's never bothered me. I like it.

- Warren

 

[franznietzsche]

By the way, is there anyone who has actually enjoyed breaking in a new TI-89? Are those the most user hostile device ever invented or do I just know dumb people? (kind of like Microsoft upgrades - when you hear coworkers screaming in agony, you tend to put off upgrading your own computer as long as possible).
Edit: You would be shocked to learn what forum I got this list from.

By the new Ti-89 I assume you mean the USB ones? I have one of the older ones I got back in high school, I've never had any problems with it. Of course, geek that I am, I spent a couple of weeks studying the manual learning all the cool things it could do. Most people get in trouble in freshman geometry for playing games on their calculators. I got in trouble for doing integrals while the teacher was lecturing . But, nostalgia aside, what's so suer unfriendly about them? You just push [2nd] [Math] and you can pick anything from the menu. The only annoyance I've ever noticed is that there is no log button (there is a ln button, but no base 10 log). So you either have to hunt it down in the menu or just type it in ( or do ln(x)/ln(10) ).

Interestingly it looks like TI doesn't sell the TI-92+ anymore. Although the TI-89 was basically just a student version of it, it had some nice extra software along with the QWERTY keys. Hopefully they at least incorporated the extra software into the new 89.

 

[BobG]

I have a TI-89, and it's never bothered me. I like it.

- Warren

That's why I focused on 'breaking one in'. The few people I know that have had one for awhile love them. The three people I've known that went out and bought one have had major problems. Two lost their operating system or some similar type of disaster. One somehow kept doing something to lock hers up - she had to keep taking out all of the batteries to try to 'reboot' the thing. This must obviously be one of those calculators so incredibly difficult that you have to read the instructions .

As far as where I got the list from ... I got it from a fountain pen collecting forum! One of the members asked where they could buy a slide rule, to which a puzzled member replied,

Just curious-why? Also, more amusing than a site that sells slide-rules...(more, semi-disturbing)

...is the fact that 3 people were able to answer your question quickly.

Who in the world collects fountain pens and why would there be a forum discussing them??! That's even stranger than the website for light bulb collectors. (That's actually a very interesting site - especially the discussion forum.)

 

[mattmns]

Hmm, maybe it is the new 89s, I have had an old 89 for a few years now, and I have had no problems with it.

 

[chroot]

Yeah, I have an old 89. I never had to read the manual, either -- it has soft-menus.

I must confess that I only know how to use one sort of slide-rule: a simple paper flight computer.

- Warren

 

[ComputerGeek]

By the new Ti-89 I assume you mean the USB ones? I have one of the older ones I got back in high school, I've never had any problems with it. Of course, geek that I am, I spent a couple of weeks studying the manual learning all the cool things it could do. Most people get in trouble in freshman geometry for playing games on their calculators. I got in trouble for doing integrals while the teacher was lecturing . But, nostalgia aside, what's so suer unfriendly about them? You just push [2nd] [Math] and you can pick anything from the menu. The only annoyance I've ever noticed is that there is no log button (there is a ln button, but no base 10 log). So you either have to hunt it down in the menu or just type it in ( or do ln(x)/ln(10) ).
Interestingly it looks like TI doesn't sell the TI-92+ anymore. Although the TI-89 was basically just a student version of it, it had some nice extra software along with the QWERTY keys. Hopefully they at least incorporated the extra software into the new 89.

YEP... back in the day and all, I had an ancient ti-89... wow, that was torture.
Heh... I had a ti-81... and it was NEW!

 

[Artman]

15. Most importantly, nobody will make you feel bad by introducing a smaller, faster, cheaper slide rule next month.

Actually, somone did. I had a circular slide rule. Much faster and easeir to use than the long straight type. With the straight type, if you went beyond the limit on one side you had to go to the other side to begin again. With the circular you just continue in the same direction. Also, it fit in a shirt pocket without looking quite as geeky. Don't know if it was any cheaper though.

 

[BobG]

Actually, somone did. I had a circular slide rule. Much faster and easeir to use than the long straight type. With the straight type, if you went beyond the limit on one side you had to go to the other side to begin again. With the circular you just continue in the same direction. Also, it fit in a shirt pocket without looking quite as geeky. Don't know if it was any cheaper though.

Circular slide rules are the only kind still made. You can still buy them from Concise in Japan. They run about 7 to 19$, plus shipping from Japan, depending on how many scales are on them. And the diameter runs from about 3 1/2" to 5" (multiply by PI and you get the length of each scale). The quality control isn't as good as it used to be in the old days, although I think the circulars always had a few more problems. They're not quite dead on accurate unless the center hole is drilled precisely in the center.

You'd think technology would increase the quality, but slide rules aren't quite as much a matter of national reputation as they were in the days when Hemmi conducted classes in Japanese schools and held the big slide rule tournaments.

 

[matthyaouw]

But can you use a slide rule to pull silly faces at people on the other side of the globe?
---->


...I'll get my coat.

 

[z-component]

YEP... back in the day and all, I had an ancient ti-89... wow, that was torture.
Heh... I had a ti-81... and it was NEW!

And by "ancient," you mean from 1998? That's when the 89 was developed. I guess you were joking. :P

I must confess that I only know how to use one sort of slide-rule: a simple paper flight computer.

Like the sliding circle used for traffic patterns that give you the heading for crosswind, downwind, base, and final with respect to the runway heading? I have one of those.

 

[FredGarvin]

You mean an E6B?

 

[Astronuc]

I used a slide rule into my freshman year of college, which was when the transition was being made from slide rule to hand-held calculator. I the purchased a SR-51 with 3 memory registers, then late a programmable TI-58C, with expanded memory that could be particitioned.

The SR-51 didn't last long (only a few years), and the TI-58C slightly longer. I ended up with an HP-41CX, which I still have and use after about 25 years.

 

[Integral]

Users of slide rules never regurgitated 9 or 10 digits of a result as if they had meaning.

 

[BobG]

Users of slide rules never regurgitated 9 or 10 digits of a result as if they had meaning.

And the first chapter of every textbook didn't have to rehash significant digits. Every answer was given to 3 significant digits (or close to it).

The Chemistry books by Michael Chang are pretty classic. If you go through the solutions manual, it becomes obvious he solved every problem with a slide rule. If the answer comes from the left side of the rule, it's given to 4 sig figs (1.265 for example); the middle to 3 sig figs (3.61 for example), and the right to 2 sig figs (9.8 for example). I think his are the only current textbooks that still do that.

 

[BobG]

And yet one more reason I love slide rules:

The Slide Rule Song

the lyrics to the song (just in case you want to sing along).

I wonder if anyone would get suspicious if I used a slide rule in Ethics class?

 

[Astronuc]

And yet one more reason I love slide rules:

The Slide Rule Song

the lyrics to the song (just in case you want to sing along).

I wonder if anyone would get suspicious if I used a slide rule in Ethics class?

I think the air is particularly thin in Colorado today .

 

[Integral]

I used a slide rule into my freshman year of college, which was when the transition was being made from slide rule to hand-held calculator. I the purchased a SR-51 with 3 memory registers, then late a programmable TI-58C, with expanded memory that could be particitioned.

The SR-51 didn't last long (only a few years), and the TI-58C slightly longer. I ended up with an HP-41CX, which I still have and use after about 25 years.

That pretty well dates you. I used a slide rule in High School and my first year of college, then I spend 4yrs playing games for Uncle Sam. When I came back in 1973 one of the students at the CC was upgrading from his HP35 to a HP45. I bought his 35 for $175, and thought I got a pretty good deal. I still have that 35 stored away, maybe someday it will be a collectors item. The first scientific calculator.

 

[Astronuc]

That pretty well dates you. I used a slide rule in High School and my first year of college, then I spend 4yrs playing games for Uncle Sam. When I came back in 1973 one of the students at the CC was upgrading from his HP35 to a HP45. I bought his 35 for $175, and thought I got a pretty good deal. I still have that 35 stored away, maybe someday it will be a collectors item. The first scientific calculator.

I did a summer program ('74) in Nuclear and Electrical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines between my junior and senior years of high school. Most of us had slide rules, but a couple of dudes had calculators, and one had the HP35, which IIRC, had 9 memories. So everyone borrowed his calculator. I think he paid about $800 for the HP-35, so $175 was a pretty good deal. I think my TI was about $200, and it only had 3 memory registers. I went through three TI's before I got the HP. All three TI's died, but I still have the HP. Best investment I ever made. Now I just need to find batteries.

 

[turbo]

We were not allowed to use calculators in college - only slide rules. The only calculator available my freshman year was a Bomar 4-function, and it cost over $300 - half of a semester's tuition. I may still have my old K+E kicking around somewhere. My HP21 died last year. I miss RPN, but the very cheap calculators won out. Darn "=" sign!

 

[robphy]

Some virtualized calculators:
http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/
https://www.physicsforums.com/blog/2006/02/10/relativator/
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/84/8442.html
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp49/pc/emulators/
http://www.vcalc.net/curta_simulator_en.htm
http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~aharris/chis/chis.html
http://qi-journal.com/culturearticles/abacusindex.html
and, of course,
http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator

 

[Chi Meson]

We were not allowed to use calculators in college - only slide rules. The only calculator available my freshman year was a Bomar 4-function, and it cost over $300 - half of a semester's tuition. I may still have my old K+E kicking around somewhere. My HP21 died last year. I miss RPN, but the very cheap calculators won out. Darn "=" sign!

I love my HP 32S RPN calculator. They still make RPN an option of several models (you can switch between RPN and scientific). When I was in college (mid-80s) RPN was THE thing.

 

[scott1]

what is a slide rule
Aren't those the things that ancient greeks used unitl they invented computers?

 

[BobG]

what is a slide rule
Aren't those the things that ancient greeks used unitl they invented computers?

Computers were born and bred in the days of the ancient greeks, not invented.

A slide rule is a logarithmic mechanical calculator. It's generally made of three strips of wood or plastic, with the middle strip sliding between the two outer strips. Slide Rules

You can probably still find a few people alive today whose job title was "computer". Especially in the aerospace industry, caclulations would be divvied up between the factory's computers (a single calculation might be given to a few computers just so the company had a double check on each calculation). A computer would start doing various mathematical calculations in the morning and finally stop when the workday was done. Then the computer would go home to his wife and kids for the evening.

 

[NoTime]

Why a slide rule and pad of paper is better than a computer

1. A Slide Rule doesn't shut down abruptly when it gets too hot.

It's Hot! I'm going out for a beer

 

[franznietzsche]

Can you even get slide rules any more?

 

[Integral]

This http://www.vcalc.net/curta_simulator_en.htm" link on Robphy's list is a fun one. I would love to hold one of these little sweethearts.:!)

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

You haven't lived until you've played Pong on a Hemmi.

 

[BobG]

Users of slide rules never regurgitated 9 or 10 digits of a result as if they had meaning.

Now I'm cooking! I just got a slide rule with a five and a half foot long scale! I can get 4 to 5 significant digits, now!

Man, the expressions on people's faces when I pull this monster of out my pocket:

Otis King K

I have an advertisement for it. When the Turners Asbestos Cement Co. uses it, you know it has to be good!

 

[turbo]

An older engineer in a pulp mill I once worked in had one of these. I've never seen another in person. Congratulations on a novel addition to your collection.

 

[Evo]

what is a slide rule
Aren't those the things that ancient geeks used until they invented computers?

 

[Astronuc]

what is a slide rule
Aren't those the things that ancient greeks used unitl they invented computers?

Those of use who couldn't afford a $200-$300 calculator had to use slide rules, even though we had access to computers - via remote terminals using dial-up and acoustic modems at ~300 baud.

Anyone remember time sharing on computers.?

How about punching paper tape or punch cards?

 

[Evo]

Those of use who couldn't afford a $200-$300 calculator had to use slide rules, even though we had access to computers - via remote terminals using dial-up and acoustic modems at ~300 baud.

Anyone remember time sharing on computers.?

How about punching paper tape or punch cards?

You ruined my joke.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Those of use who couldn't afford a $200-$300 calculator had to use slide rules, even though we had access to computers - via remote terminals using dial-up and acoustic modems at ~300 baud.

Anyone remember time sharing on computers.?

How about punching paper tape or punch cards?

I used to work for a machine tool manufacturer just as paper tape was being phased out. We were describing the capacity of floppy disks to our customers in units of length of paper tape.

 

[BobG]

Those of use who couldn't afford a $200-$300 calculator had to use slide rules, even though we had access to computers - via remote terminals using dial-up and acoustic modems at ~300 baud.

Anyone remember time sharing on computers.?

How about punching paper tape or punch cards?

Reason 16: When you drop a slide rule, the numbers are still in the same order when you pick it up as they were before you dropped it.

 

[turbo]

Anyone remember time sharing on computers.?

How about punching paper tape or punch cards?

When I was in engineering school, calculators were forbidden, so we used slide rules. Engineering students were required to learn an entry-level computer language (CUPL) and then move on to FORTRAN. We'd write out our code by hand, then transcribe it onto punch-cards with big console-sized writers. Then you submit your stack of cards to the acolytes of the computer god, and hope you get a nice big stack of green and white printout in a couple of days, instead of an error log. Troubleshooting code was not such a big problem, but you had to right onto it because of the lag time in getting the corrected code re-processed - in time to submit the results to the prof.

 

[Astronuc]

I had a strong dislike for the SYS and PROC cards. I probably never took the right class.

To save money, we were supposed to use 24 or 48 hr turn around time, or run at night between midnight and 0600.

I seem to remember in my freshman year that we couldn't use calculators because not everyone had them, so we used slide rules. By my sophomore year, everyone had a basic calculator.

 

[Astronuc]

You ruined my joke.

Sorry. It went way over my head.

In my day, they geeks were the guys who wore their slide rules on their belts. They were usually the first to get calculators, and they wore them on their belts as well.

 

[Evo]

Sorry. It went way over my head.

Well, I'm not saying it was a good joke.

 

[Evo]

Anyone remember rotary calculators?

http://www.mortati.com/glusker/elecmech/rotary/DiehlDSR18.htm

I used an old manual one back in the early 70's in college for a business class.

Here's some nostalgia.

http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/before.html

 

[turbo]

Anyone remember rotary calculators?

http://www.mortati.com/glusker/elecmech/rotary/DiehlDSR18.htm

I used an old manual one back in the early 70's in college for a business class.

Here's some nostalgia.

http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/before.html

These old machines were work-horses, and problems (work) had to be structured to take advantage of the features of the machines. Nowadays, computers are multi-purpose and can tackle problems in ways that are limited mostly by the inventiveness of the programmers.

About 1980, I did a heat-and-mass balance on the multiple water systems of a very large pulp mill. Thankfully, a junior engineer in my department was a whiz with FORTRAN and he helped structure my submissions to SAS so that we got reasonably accurate results. Identifying and reducing inefficiencies in water usage and heat use/reclamation can be worth $$$$$ in a big mill like that, so it was an important year-long study. Still, I felt like I was back in college a decade earlier, submitting data and processing instructions, and waiting for the printout.

 

[Moonbear]

I had a strong dislike for the SYS and PROC cards. I probably never took the right class.

When I first had to learn to run SAS for my statistics in grad school, I probably spent a year head scratching, wondering why someone would come up with such bizarre command lines to tell it what to do...use PROC to tell it which analysis to run, then type in CARDS to tell it you were going to input data...I kept wondering, why not DATA?? (I recall INPUT meant something else, but have fortunately had much more user-friendly software for a while now, so don't recall all the commands anymore.) FINALLY, my mentor clued me in that the terms were carry overs from when stats were run on computers using punch cards.

 

[turbo]

In the days of slide rules, calculation power was distributed (unless you were the US military and could afford analog vacuum-tube computers that filled a building just to do ballistics for naval guns), and when 4-function calculators came out, slide rules were still a lot handier for a lot of stuff, but calculation power was still distributed. At the time, real time-intensive calculations (especially recursive stuff that could loop over and over) were concentrated in mainframes, and it wasn't until the advent of the PC that you could break that dependence on punch-cards, batching jobs, and sharing time on some centralized (regional) computer. By the time 1988 came around, I had already bought a 286-based PC with a 20 meg hard-drive, and taught myself how to write executables running under Ashton-Tate dBase. I quit my job in a paper mill and started doing custom programming for local business. My PC at that time (less than 20 years ago) was state-of-the-art and cost me over $5000 with a color monitor (rare at the time) and a dot-matrix printer. That was a HUGE investment.

 

[Astronuc]

Anyone remember rotary calculators?

http://www.mortati.com/glusker/elecmech/rotary/DiehlDSR18.htm

I used an old manual one back in the early 70's in college for a business class.

Here's some nostalgia.

http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/before.html

The stepfather of one of my friends was a surveyor, and he had a Monroe Manual Rotary Calculator. I used mess around on it. It was impressive to see that thing work!

 

[D H]

I did a summer program ('74) in Nuclear and Electrical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines between my junior and senior years of high school.

Small world, summer of '72. Calculus in two weeks and then six weeks of digital electronics and nuclear physics. One guy had a calculator. Good memories!

I bought my first calculator shortly after returning. It could add, subtract, multiply, and even divide, and cost around $150. The niftiest thing about it was that it stopped working after a less than six months. What made it this failure so nifty was (1) the warranty was still in effect, and (2) the repair department lost it. After many months of wrangling, they eventually agreed to replace it with a new calculator worth around $150. That bulky four function calculator magically changed into a spanking new portable HP scientific calculator.

 

[Astronuc]

Small world, summer of '72. Calculus in two weeks and then six weeks of digital electronics and nuclear physics. One guy had a calculator. Good memories!

At CSM?! I stayed in Thomas Hall.

I bought my first calculator shortly after returning. It could add, subtract, multiply, and even divide, and cost around $150. The niftiest thing about it was that it stopped working after a less than six months. What made it this failure so nifty was (1) the warranty was still in effect, and (2) the repair department lost it. After many months of wrangling, they eventually agreed to replace it with a new calculator worth around $150. That bulky four function calculator magically changed into a spanking new portable HP scientific calculator.

Some guys have all the luck! I bought an SR-51, which subsequently died, then a TI-58, which died, then finally I wised up a bought an HP-41CX, which I still have 27 years later.

 

[D H]

At CSM?! I stayed in Thomas Hall.

At CSM! Hmm, I didn't realize until just now that I had quoted an old post. I guess BobG just had to brag about his big honking slide rule with 4 or 5 digit accuracy.

I still have the notes for the digital electronics half, including a class roster. I don't remember where I stayed, and its not in the notes either. I do remember getting quite proficient with the slide rule during those eight weeks. I still have one: Metal. My good bamboo one disappeared

 

[Astronuc]

Small world, summer of '72. Calculus in two weeks and then six weeks of digital electronics and nuclear physics. One guy had a calculator. Good memories!

Talk about a small world. That's the same program I was in. Professor Burnett taught the nuclear physics part. I still have my notebook.

Great memories! I met too really nice girls, Leah and Laura. I eventually took Leah to my high school prom. She lived about 90 miles from me when I lived in Texas.

 

[D H]

I did one that one at CSM and one at a close-by school in mathematics (I did non-Euclidean geometry) during the previous summer . I remember dozens of such programs across the country. I had my choice of CSM, LSU, and the University of Kansas between my junior and senior year in high school. http://www.igert.org/high school.asp?sort=cat&subsort=Physics" . Sad.