24-Ruby IV

Question

Nostalgia - a slide rule

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
February 23, 2013
20 replies
34441 views

I put in order my desk drawer and found this is what:

Then I found it in Internet - http://terni.ru/slide_rule

Other

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

By the way the biggest slide rule on which to compute the orbit of the first Soviet satellite (Sputnik) was the size of a few meters.

M

MichaelH

1-Visitor

When I was going to high school, we had a similar big slide rule in the front of most math classes. We were trying to beat the Russians to the Moon, and the slide rule was one of the tools to do it with.

I should have known there was no "slide rule gap".

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

MichaelH wrote:
We were trying to beat the Russians to the Moon, and the slide rule was one of the tools to do it with.

Leonid Brezhnev has collected Soviet scientists and said:

- We will not fly to the Moon after the Americans - we will fly to Sun!

Scientists argue:

- The temperature on Sun is a million degrees!

Brezhnev calms them:

- We will fly at night!

W

Werner_E

25-Diamond I

Valery Ochkov schrieb:
I put in order my desk drawer and found this is what:
Then I found it in Internet - http://terni.ru/slide_rule

So you may be interested in http://sliderulemuseum.com/

And then - why not a cylindrical or circular one - http://www.oughtred.org/jos/OldRussianCylindricalAndCircularSlideRules-Leipala.pdf

R

RichardJ

19-Tanzanite

I have an Otis Kings Pocket Calculator (http://www.svpal.org/~dickel/OK/OtisKing.html) , a slide rule with a 1m sprial scale on a cylinder.

Mine's the model "L". Haven't used it in a long time!

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

Richard Jackson wrote:
I have an Otis Kings Pocket Calculator (http://www.svpal.org/~dickel/OK/OtisKing.html) , a slide rule with a 1m sprial scale on a cylinder.
Mine's the model "L". Haven't used it in a long time!

I have seen such device in a museum. It was a slide rule and a telescope for the navigator ship. Lets change. I will send you my rule (see the first message), and you send me yours.

S

StuartBruff

23-Emerald V

I keep one in case of emergencies.

This is the last one I used for real ...

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

Thanks to all!

Teachers told me at school (Cold War times) that "stupid Americans" (see the poster bellow - no one wo- or black man) are studying a slide rule with log scale (an automation multiplication and division) only in elite selected universities. American "stupid students" in high schools and in others universities are studying slide rules with linear scale (see the video below) but not with a logarithmic scale - an automation of addition and subtraction.

Sorry - but the name "a Slide Rule" is wrong. We say in Russia - a Logarithmic Rule. It is more correct

How many this old IBM calculators is now equal to one PC with Mathcad?

A slide rule with linear scale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKQ4Xcs_uUo

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

One soviet poster with a slide rule (more than 150 American Engineers and equal one БЭСМ computer - see above):

T

tietjee

15-Moonstone

i lways keeped one handy when calculators first came out. the battery never died.

there is one in my desk, which i show all new engineerings we hire. we had one that did not even know what it was. it should still be taught at school to help with learning the importance of logs. not sure were we would get any for the class.

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

Do you know that engineers use (used) slide rules, sorry, logarithmic rule with base 10 but mathematics - with base e (2.71828)!

Joke!

But seriously, the slide rule of algebra is the Laplace transform, which replaces the taking of derivation on multiplication and taking the antiderivative to the division. A Normal slide rule replaces multiplication by addition and division on subtraction.

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

Valery Ochkov wrote:
I put in order my desk drawer and found this is what:
Then I found it in Internet - http://terni.ru/slide_rule
/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/2-198045-45910/LogSlide.png

The desk drawer where I found this old slide rule was covered with a old sheet of paper. This paper was not simple, but graphing paper, and not a simple graphing paper - logarithmic graphing paper, and not a simple logarithmic graphing paper (x or y) but a double logarithmic graphing paper - log by x and by y!

One more nostalgia...

Scottish engineers have to wear Scottish kilts with same design

Simple paper was a deficit in the Soviet era, but the millimeter paper (Russian name of this paper) was in excess.

Sellers of packaged goods such paper

Now in Mathcad:

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

My colleague brought me a slide rule of his father.

One side

second side

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

My little nostalgia exhibition

R

RichardJ

19-Tanzanite

Slide rules are not completely dead. If you don't like pushing virtual calculator buttons on your phone, your can use a virtual slide rule instead

Slide Rule - screenshot thumbnail

-

-MFra-

21-Topaz II

Hello everyone!

I, in my drawer ... I have a Nestler, HP55, HP41, HP 65 SX, ... out of a drawer ... HP Vectra 486 33T ... ect DSC00079 (1) (1024x646).jpg

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

One scene from the Soviet comedy film "Самогонщики - Bootleggers"

One character ("Балбес") calculates with a slide rule how many sugar from the bag add in need, to get a good самогон (hand made vodka).

See pls Самогонщики HD1080p - YouTube. This film is without words. Only fine music...

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

A slide rule in one more soviet movie The Spring.

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

The cheapest textbooks on calculus used instead of natural logarithms logarithms identical to natural.

(В дешёвых учебниках по математическому анализу вместо натуральных логарифмов используются логарифмы, идентичные натуральным.)

www.anekdot.ru

R

RichardJ

19-Tanzanite

I just figured out what this is:

I've had it for years, but never knew what it was. Just some "weird ruler". It's called a Gunter's rule, or Gunter's scale. It was a precursor to the slide rule. There's more about how it was used here:

http://www.nzeldes.com/HOC/Gunter.htm

There are some other examples here:

http://www.sliderulemuseum.com/Rarities.htm

Based on the examples shown, mine is from the early 1800's. Note in particular the style of the numbering, and the fact that the 12 inch scale on the top of side 1 runs from right to left, rather than left to right.

There's a higher resolution image in the attachment.

V

ValeryOchkov

Author

24-Ruby IV

Yesterday I visited a laundry. A receptionist (one old women) weighed my linen on some balances (one picture from Internet):

and calculated the price with this "computer":

You can see the result on the "screen" (It is my photo) - 531 rubles and 48 kopeks (1$=80 Ruble).

At home I have checked it (Mathcad Prime 3.1).

I was surprised at first, but then I thought that all of this (and the phone) will work after... a nuclear war

From Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schoty_abacus.jpg

Russian abacus

The Russian abacus, the schoty (счёты), usually has a single slanted deck, with ten beads on each wire (except one wire, usually positioned near the user, with four beads for quarter-ruble fractions). Older models have another 4-bead wire for quarter-kopeks, which were minted until 1916. The Russian abacus is often used vertically, with wires from left to right in the manner of a book. The wires are usually bowed to bulge upward in the center, to keep the beads pinned to either of the two sides. It is cleared when all the beads are moved to the right. During manipulation, beads are moved to the left. For easy viewing, the middle 2 beads on each wire (the 5th and 6th bead) usually are of a different colour from the other eight beads. Likewise, the left bead of the thousands wire (and the million wire, if present) may have a different color.

As a simple, cheap and reliable device, the Russian abacus was in use in all shops and markets throughout the former Soviet Union, and the usage of it was taught in most schools until the 1990s.^[42]^[43] Even the 1874 invention of mechanical calculator, Odhner arithmometer, had not replaced them in Russia and likewise the mass production of Felix arithmometers since 1924 did not significantly reduce their use in the Soviet Union.^[44] The Russian abacus began to lose popularity only after the mass production of microcalculators had started in the Soviet Union in 1974. Today it is regarded as an archaism and replaced by the handheld calculator.

... or Mathcad Prime/Gateway developer!

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