81 year old sailor on next boat started talking slide rulers
So I pulled mine and and we raced calculations
#SlideRules
Happy Thanksgiving, #Fediverse!
#Linux
#StarTrek
#FOSS
#Fedora
#KDE
#SlideRule
#SlideRules
#AmIsraelChai
#Thanksgiving
Hackaday: How To Use That Slide Rule. “You have that slide rule in the back of the closet. Maybe it was from your college days. Maybe it was your Dad’s. Honestly. Do you know how to use it? Really? All the scales? That’s what we thought. [Amen Zwa, Esq.] not only tells you how slide rules came about, but also how to use many of the common scales.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/22/hackaday-how-to-use-that-slide-rule/
Those look fantastic! As a fan and collector of slide rules, I am interested to know more!
🚨BREAKING: Humanity owes its #survival to slide rules? 🤔🎓 Who knew that waving around a stick with numbers could plant crops and store grains? 🌾 Clearly, if only we had slide rules sooner, we'd all be living in a futuristic utopia by now! 🛸📏
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/ #slideRules #agriculture #innovation #futurism #HackerNews #ngated
I found my father's crib notes engraved in the base of a slide rule. I managed to decipher one of them, an application of the rule of proportion for calculating temperature dependent resistance of metals. The others I really don't understand. I believe that he was never very good at math - he was good at understanding complex things, knew how to make them organizable - a silent leader.
#generations #cheating #parents #sliderules
Not too many folks still use slide rules. A few, but fewer all the time.
It's a shame, because they give you an insight about math and relationships between values that you just don't get from a calculator or a digital computer.
I keep one handy for quick calculations, but I'm not an engineer.
Have a look at The Oughtred Society, too: https://www.oughtred.org/index.shtml
...and their publication, The Journal of the Oughtred Society: https://www.oughtred.org/journal.shtml
#Accounting, #SlideRules, #penmanship, #shorthand, #typing, #telegraphy, and #carpentry were taught to school children in Burma, well into the 1980s. I think it would be socially beneficial to teach these skills to young American kids, today.
Basic accounting and personal finance are useful skills for adults, and indispensable for college kids wielding credit cards.
The slide rule endows the student with a keener understanding of various functions and, more importantly, always to check one's results, mentally.
Being able to write in a beautiful, cursive script with a fountain pen may now be but a party trick, but it still is an important social skill.
Shorthand offers a massive advantage in note taking. Given that every child learns to type social media posts well before they first learn to speak, proper typing technique should be taught to children, for efficiency, for preventing repetitive stress injuries, etc.
Telegraphy is valuable in aviation: VOR and NDB navigation aids transmit their identifiers in Morse code. And Morse code is still a thing in the amateur radio scene.
Teaching kids basic carpentry, like making a rough table, is of limited utility, but they will never forget that experience of making something out of raw materials.
Above all, these old skills are cool, at least in some circles. And if nothing else, these activities will surely keep them off social media.
There was somebody on her who restored #sliderules but I can't remember who. Five here, one very broken, but the others look to be in pretty good nick.
Neil deGrasse Tyson on #SlideRules—the interviewer has never heard of the slide rule.
I'm proud to say that mine was the last batch of students who used the slide rule in our #engineering school in Burma, way back in the early 1980s.
I used the government-issued Aristo 0968 log-log duplex engineering straight rule and the hand-me-down Faber-Castell 8/10 circular rule. But my all-time favourite has always been the Hemmi 130W advanced Darmstadt—simple, elegant, compact, powerful.
https://youtube.com/shorts/uy99Jnnfi88?si=65DhbMXMIdB-SBU9
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/
Who is still making Slide Rules?
The usual answer to this question is Concise in Japan.
I give you... The Alvin No 7355 Screw Data Selector slide chart with C and D scales!
Here are a Pickett 1000, 500, and 800-T. The 500 and 800-T are good examples of how Pickett #SlideRules changed over time, changing from magnesium to aluminum, adding scales, updating the cursor, and arranging their scales differently. Pickett, K&E, Post, and other #SlideRule manufacturers switched from the LL0 & LL00 scales keyed to A & B to the reciprocal Log-Log scales keyed to C & D in the mid-1950s.
Thank you! #SlideRules
It’s an easy rabbit hole to fall down. If you have a couple #SlideRules you like, stay away from EBay!
I’d try making sure they are good and clean before trying to add anything to lubricate them.
1/
What I found at the back of a drawer last night. Here it's lined up (more or less) to multiply by 2.
Been there, done that. It’s a real easy mistake to make. Some other Slide Rule manuals spend a lot of pages on “How to Read the Scales” exercises. Practice makes Perfect!
Yup! A circular slide rule is a little unconventional, but has the advantage of never “going off scale”, where your answer is of the end of the rule. For example, when multiplying 4 by 6.
If you want a conventional, linear, #SlideRule, I don’t think anyone is still making them. You’ll have to look at eBay or ISRM. There are plenty of nice, affordable used #SlideRules to be found!
Look for “Concise” on Amazon. They are a Japanese company that appears to be the last company manufacturing #SlideRules.
You can also check http://sliderulemuseum.com/SRM_Duplicates.shtml to “adopt” an extra #SlideRule from their collection.
Also, it’s pretty easy to find an affordable #SlideRule on EBay.
Welcome to the hobby!
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst