Who's thinking of Switching to Spartan?

I have an old slide rule left from 1920s when my father was studying architecture. it's about 5" wide and 30" long, has 3 inner sliders with extra outside sliders for calculating Pi and all other kinds of specialized calculations. I used to take it to school and pretend I know how to use it but (ha ha) never managed to do more than simple multiplication at level that I could do in my head anyway.
"Slipsticks", I collected quite a few. Every machining tool company used to give one with their products to calculate feeds and speeds for their products, also hydraulics, electrical, mechanical ones for calculations of parameters needed to use in specified product. Setting up production machines without them would be all but impossible. Walls of my shops in various factories were also wallpapered with different charts and cross references. Stuff like that is much faster than having to look up those things on a computer or even calculate on a calculator although a watch with a calculator saved me from walking some miles in the factories.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Technically, those are not sliderules, especially the second one. This is a simple sliderule (some could be pretty complex):

Second one was intended to be an example of a type of "slipstick", not sliderule, as stated. Countmike is correct in that they came in all varieties of pre-defined functions. A Sling Psychrometer is just another pre-defined function slipstick.

CountMike said:

I have an old slide rule left from 1920s when my father was studying architecture. it's about 5" wide and 30" long, has 3 inner sliders with extra outside sliders for calculating Pi and all other kinds of specialized calculations. I used to take it to school and pretend I know how to use it but (ha ha) never managed to do more than simple multiplication at level that I could do in my head anyway.
"Slipsticks", I collected quite a few. Every machining tool company used to give one with their products to calculate feeds and speeds for their products, also hydraulics, electrical, mechanical ones for calculations of parameters needed to use in specified product. Setting up production machines without them would be all but impossible. Walls of my shops in various factories were also wallpapered with different charts and cross references. Stuff like that is much faster than having to look up those things on a computer or even calculate on a calculator although a watch with a calculator saved me from walking some miles in the factories.

Post a picture of this Goliath analog calculator! Love to see it! Maybe a short selfie-vid of you with it in action!

f14tomcat said:

Post a picture of this Goliath analog calculator! Love to see it! Maybe a short selfie-vid of you with it in action!

Just have to find it, it's somewhere in my museum (er.... attic). As for video of me using it, just imagine a very puzzled and confused face.

CountMike said:

Just have to find it, it's somewhere in my museum (er.... attic). As for video of me using it, just imagine a very puzzled and confused face.

It's Count Mikie! circa Halloween 1948

I must have had a look like that because I'm still wondering which kind of crazy world I popped into.

When I first started to study electronics in 1972, I bought a nice slide rule, made of metal instead of plastic, It even had a leather carrying case. However, once calculators came down in price the slide rule went out the window.

In 1973, the HP 45 calculator was the one all of us electronics students drooled over but it cost $400. I ended up with a National Semiconductor 4640 which was a clone of the HP 45 but because I knew someone that worked at NS, I was able to get it for $120.

Had to learn this strange way of doing calculations, RPN (Reverse Polish Notation). Most of my fellow students used TI calculators since they were most affordable. TI's used Algebraic Notation and I would challenge people with their TI calculator to enter a complex formula on their calc and see who can come up with the answer first. RPN was far more efficient at doing stuff with nested parentheses so that there was no contest, I won every time. RPN was strange at first but once I picked it up it was so much easier.