The protractor and the Bunsen burner. Playing the recorder in music class. Drawing arcs and circles with a compass in geometry. These tools of the education trade become part of our lives for a ...

Before the smartphone, the laptop and the pocket calculator, there was a powerful mechanical computer. Our new series, Tools of the Trade, begins... The Slide Rule: A Computing Device That Put A Man ...

In 1966 I went to Leeds University to study Electrical and Electronic Engineering. At an introductory lecture from the Professor, we were told we would need a slide rule for the course. It was ...

Unless you are above a certain age, the only time you may have seen a slide rule (or a slip stick, as we sometimes called them) is in the movies. You might have missed it, but slide rules show up in ...

The May 2006 issue of Scientific American (www.sciam.com, available only to subscribers, sorry) has an excellent article, “When Slide Rules Ruled”, on the history, development, use, success, and swift ...

Most people have heard of or seen slide rules, with older generations likely having used these devices in school and at their jobs. As purely analog computers these ingenious devices use precomputed ...

No frontier sheriff ever strode more proudly down Main Street than Tom Apostol did across the campus of the University of Utah in 1941, wearing his own trusty side arm—a 10-inch Keuffel & Esser ...