Have you ever used one of these? Tools from the past.

[@charlesbrewer6552]

I finished high school in Australia in 1970. We were not allowed to use calculators, but in the engineering type classes we were taught to use slide rules and were expected to use them in exams. By the way many pilots still use the E6b or cr 6 flight computers, the "whiz wheel". These are actually circular slide rules with special reference points marked on them as an aid to use. They are used to calculate time and distance, fuel required as well as conversions like weight of fuel or oil, miles to nautical miles or kilometers, ect. They are very fast to use, require no power and can be used with one hand. So the slide rule still lives on in the modern world!

[@clarencegreen3071]

I still have my E6B and am proud of it, from 1965. Paid $2 for my first "used" slide rule in 1961. Bought it from an old country boy that didn't know what it was. I got a real bamboo slide rule in 1963 for $40 - which was a Lot of money. Still have it!

[@randyshoquist7726]

I started college fall term of 1972. One of my first classes was slide rule use. I had a Post Versalog II which I had bought at my HS store. My professor checked our work with a four-function calculator he built from a kit advertised in the back of Popular Electronics magazine. My first slide rule was 6" Sterling 587 just like yours. I bought it in the fifth grade and learned how to use it on my own, with only the supplied instruction sheet. I still have that slide rule.

[@gener.1253]

I took the same class in 1970.

[@bitsofwisdom460]

I remember the 4 function kits in that time frame. They were interesting, and I was interested in building one, but the price was still rather high for a high school student.

[@kenfrank2730]

Do folks here remember the giant slide rules hanging in classrooms? They were used for teaching and often found in math and science classrooms. I think it would be cool having one of those hanging in my den.

[@manuelgonzalez-wy2bn]

Thanks for refreshing memories of my days in technical college mid 60’s working metric and imperial calculations in slide

[@wilsonle61]

I graduated High School in 79. In the Navy in electronics school, we used scientific calculators. Which I had never seen before. But all our electronic calculations were done on these. Later, when I entered the Army (89), I was branched into Field Artillery. In Artillery school, we used slide rules for everything when computing data for the guns/howitzers. It was months of training in what was then called "manual gunnery" I am glad we did, in the last 4 weeks of Artillery school we learned computers for gunfire control. But the slide rules gave us a firm foundation in the basics of controlling the fire of large guns before we went on to computers.

[@namvet_13e]

I was an instructor at Ft Sill for a while before going on to Nam. In VietNam, I think we were just as effective when we just worked with chart boards and slide rules as when our FADAC computer was working. Before going into the army I had my BS in engineering so I was very familiar with slide rules. In VietNam, I was the E5 over the FDC so when we got a fire mission I let the guys start working the manual solution while I went out and started the generator for the computer. Of course that involved winding a rope around the flywheel and hand starting it. Hence, the computer required much more manual work than the slide rule.

[@jamesshearer9616]

I worked in IT until I was 68. Almost all of the other 18 or so members of the staff were half my age or less. Once I mentioned a slide rule in a meeting. No one knew what it was. They called me grandpa and would often ask for advice, but I often had trouble translating what I was telling them to their experience. Time moves on to new roads and the old ones fall to dust.

[@gspaulsson]

Old joke. Ask an engineer what's 2x2, he whips out his slide rule and says 3.9

[@OzzieKev]

Then rechecks and says 4.1, so takes an average of both results and says 4.

[@grahamj9101]

Yes. I bought mine during a trip to Germany back in 1962, when I was 17 going on 18 (sorry, but I've just been to the Austrian Tyrol), knowing that I would be going to university to study mechanical engineering. When I got back home, I bought an instruction book, which recommended practising for 10 minutes a day.

[@rickrys2729]

That would be pretty sloppy. Tried this on my old K&E. I get 4.00, even 3.99 would be sloppy.

[@richbreton5105]

I understand it is an old joke, but I agree it would be very sloppy work. I just tried it on my 1970 vintage Jason bamboo slide rule, would be off by about an 1/8 of an inch to get 3.9! or even 4.1!

[@romeowhiskey1146]

2+2 =4 2 *2 = 4 2 ^ 2 = 4 Anything else?

[@thehighwayband]

Some people easily discard this object as "obsolete" but they should remember that it are exactly these "calculators" that made space traveling possible, as well as sending probes into deep space and keeping the International Space Station in orbit. And then there are the thousands of ways in which they have contributed to the modern ages. No, not obsolete but indeed important, extremely important.

[@johnmcintyre3827]

Well said, thank you.

[@jtc1947]

No BATTERIES or electricity required!

[@robertcambareri1028]

Well stated.

[@MelodyMan69]

Still got my slide rule from 1960s School Days. Also have a Circular Slide Rule I recieved on my first Day at work. 🇦🇺

[@chieflefthand780]

When I was in school math was not the strongest subject. T may teacher wanted the answer out to four decimal places. He said if you use a slide rule you only need three places. I learned that slide rule fast. It helped me later when I had to use an E6B slide calculator.

[@dustyoldduster6407]

I had a slide rule way back when I first started university. I couldn't do much with it, and for me showing it simply meant I was smart. Looking back at that time and reflecting on the beginning of my teaching career in the late 70s to mid 80s, the Rubic's cube amongst students took on the same feel: to be seen as smart everyone had to have one dangling from their clothing showing it had been solved. A student of mine that occasionally caused me problems had one that was always in the solved position. On one such problematic time I asked to see it and proceeded to scramble it. The look of panic on that student's face was amazing. Later in the day I noticed the cube was back in the solved position, and I learned that most students were just pulling off the little cubes and sticking them back in the solved position.

[@RedOctober2011]

That's called "Thinking outside of the cube."

[@mikebruegger8654]

Nice, reminds me of the E6B for aviation calculations that I learned with when getting my pilot license. Things have certainly changed....

[@orangequant]

Thanks for the nostalgia! Thru HS (1965 grad), slide was virtually grafted to my hands. Plastic. Now lemmee throw a curveball--- if you wanted to be a *real* geek, you got yourself a *CIRCULAR* badboy. So you were able to extract more accuracy because it was 3.14 times as long as a straight one having a length equal to the circle's diameter. My first experience with electronic calculator was late 60s when I was on a job and they gave me a Friden 8-cell (?) desktop model.

[@bitsofwisdom460]

You're welcome! I never tried the circular ones, because I was at that transition point where calculators were coming in quickly, and that began to replace my slide rule.

[@craigsudman4556]

No batteries required. I was taught how to use a slip stick in college. I still have it...somewhere. After graduating I put the slip stick away and never looked back. Great video thumbs up.

[@phillargus2757]

Nah not "slip stick" - guessing stick.

[@alphalunamare]

@@phillargus2757 hahahahaha dip stick! ...just kidding :-)

[@johnchestnut5340]

Haven't heard slip stick in years.

[@bitsofwisdom460]

Thank you. I don't find much use for the slide rule these days either, yet I don't like to forget the lessons of the past.

[@martinfiedler4317]

@@bitsofwisdom460 Taking statistics courses right now to polish my quantitative skills and I have noticed that making the calculations with a slide rule - where reasonably possible - helps me to better understand what I am actually calculating and to remember the method. Using the slide rule forces me to think more about what I am actually doing, while I tend to mindless button pushing when using the calculator. So, bottom line: I feel they might still be a valuable didactic tool in schools.

[@p38arover22]

Dad was an engineer and bought me my first slide rule when I was 13 in 1961. I bought a new one in 1965 when I started training as an electronics tech. I still have Dad’s Hemmi bamboo slide rule, in its leather case.

[@markbernier8434]

Me too. Dad's is pre-war.

[@tcoradeschi]

Anyone else remember the 5’ or 6’ long slide rules that the teachers would use? They’d hang from hooks over the chalkboard…

[@quantumss]

I don't as I avoided those classes at all cost.

[@kenfrank2730]

In high school (1972-1973) I had a Pickett aluminum slide rule. When I started college in 1974 my parents bought me the Texas Instrument SR-11 electronic slide rule. It had the square root function key, which was a big deal at the time. The calculator cost my parents $168 which was very expensive 50 years ago. I still have the slide rule and calculator.

[@markthompson4885]

but can you still find battery for it?

[@wholeNwon]

I was invited to my old alma mater to give a guest lecture. On my way to the room where I was to speak, I passed a display case containing various "antique" items relevant to the department's activities and there was a slide rule very similar to the one I had used so long ago. Time flies.

[@richbreton5105]

I had a similar experience, I visited the National Science Museum in Tokyo on a business trip many years ago. I walked by a display case and noticed the same exact model Jason bamboo slide rule I used in high school and college. I still have it and showed it to my grand daughter who is in high school. She was fascinated especially after explaining it was based on log scales. Thanks

[@wholeNwon]

@@richbreton5105 Where did all those years go?

[@paulm5443]

I'm 71 and still have 2 slide rules somewhere. My kids will think they're mysterious when I pass and they have to clear out my stuff. My first calculator was a Rockwell LED display and it was fantastic.

[@Windgonner]

Ohh, I only have one left. My youngest brother broke the other one at high school.

[@bitsofwisdom460]

Yes, I liked my Rockwell. I think I still have it tucked away somewhere.

[@smahendra1948]

What I like about the Slide rule is that one needs to mentally keep track of the decimal place unlike the calculator. This helps one to concentrate and sharpen one's mind.

[@HHH-nv9xb]

I went through school just after the introduction of calculators into the classroom. I remember the big slide ruler above the chalkboard. Never was taught how to use it but always carious about it. I have pick up couple of the slide rulers from estate sales. I wasn't able to figure out how it is used. Thank you!

[@schreds8882]

By the time I got to high school, slide rules were gone but we still used a variation of them in aviation called the E6B. But by the time the middle 80's came even the venerable E6B was being replaced by specialized electronic flight calculators. I don't know that I could use either a slide rule or an E6B anymore without struggling.

[@pmchamlee]

In 1963-67 I used a Keuffel & Esser in HS and U of Houston in the Engineering College. Most satisfactory! 🤠

[@grahaml6668]

The K&E was what we all aspired to! Pickett was what most of us actually had. I liked the yellow version!

[@research903]

Brings back memories. For my first two years in college I used a Pickett slide rule. My first scientific calculator was a HP 65. Still have both.

[@raydelaforce8149]

Wonderful - takes me back to the the early years when I used a slide rule to do all my computational work. My father bought me an Arisro Hyperbolog slide rule when I started college in 1957 and I still have it today. He taught me all the short cuts and how to get the decimal point in the right place. When I show it to young engineers, they are completely baffled. Most of them had forgotten what they learned about logarithms in high school. My father who was a teacher in a technical college in the UK, even showe his students how to make a paper slide rule. My dad made a 6 foot long slide rules to demonstrate its use in class. Long gone are the days when very accurate work was done with 7 figure log tables. My first calculator was the HP 65. My current calculator is the HP 50G, probably the finest calculator in the world (in my opinion). RPN logic works in exactly the same way as the brain works and is very fast and at the same time very flexible.

[@jiggsborah7041]

We still used slide rule in high school back in the seventies and there was a book of tables as well. It's a fantastic tool an analogue device and I think it's a great invention. ❤

[@darkdelta]

I had a yellow Pickett, used it in school.

[@keithrosenberg5486]

At yard sales and thrift stores once very expensive Eugene Dietzgen Co. slide rules can be had for a couple of dollars. Like a Dietzgen Maniphase Multiplex Vector Type Log Log Rule - Cat. No. N1725. Some of its scales are so small (on the LL3 & LL03) a magnifying glass would be needed to see it well enough to use accurately. I can only use it to multiply and divide. I still have my 6" aluminum Pickett slide rule my mother bought me in High School. Ditto drafting machines and scales for drafting machines.

[@The4Crawler]

My dad gave me his Post Versalog when I was in high school. I had to teach myself to use it, no instruction for that given in either high school or college. Our high school math area had a lone HP-35 calculator on a cable lock for students to use. First year in college (1975) was no calculators allowed in exams, but the second year, they were allowed. However, exams were still set up for slide rules, in that you could simplify equations on paper then just do the final calculation on the slide rule. A friend of mine had a calculator that second year. I recall one of the first exams you could hear all the clickety-clacks of the buttons on his calculator. In the meantime, I set up the calculation on a piece of paper and then a few flicks of the slide rule and I had the answer. By the third year, all the exams were tailored for calculators. I ended up buying a TI SR-52 programmable calculator and that was awesome. For each class, I made a custom program card with all the common formulas needed, adding to that card as the semester progressed.

[@gerardtrigo380]

I learned first from a book at the library, unimaginatively but very descriptively titled, "How to Use a Slide Rule." We also had a brief course in the first week of Chemistry class.

[@johnrupik786]

I still have the two slide rules I bought about 1970, when I was working as an Engineering Estimator. One is a circular slide rule and the other is a tube. The scales on these rules were longer than the usual stick rules and so gave more precise answers. There were also tricks you could do with a slide rule that you could not do with a normal electronic calculator, e.g. get the weight of round steel bar by just putting the "1.0" on a constant (2.12).

[@tomroderick6041]

Really nice video that brought back many memories to this 77 year old retired engineer. I bought my Dietzgen slide rule when I started engineering college in 1965 and used it until graduation in 1970. Entered active duty in the USAF in 1971 and after basic training my first assignment was for a Vietnam Tour but based in Thailand. Didn't need it much there. My second assignment was at Wright Patterson Ohio starting in October 1972 and I did take it with for that assignment with the Foreign Technology Division. At that time the Air Force had a program where you could get 75% of the cost of "Job Related" college courses reimbursed. It was probably 1973 or 1974 at the latest that I wanted to take a course in transistor amplifier circuit design that was being offered as a graduate course, but I could audit the course without enrolling in a graduate degree program and get the course approved by the Air Force. This was especially true since the course met in the evening after my duty hours so I enrolled. For the first meeting of the class at the nearby University I took my trusty Dietzgen with me. In the class room there was the instructor and perhaps twenty or twenty five students in the class and only TWO people had slide rules. The rest had some form of scientific calculator. The only two with slide rules were myself and the instructor! My Lab Partner had a Texas Instrument scientific calculator and we met at my off base apartment to prepare our lab reports, and I got to see how useful it could be. When the price dropped below $100 at the base exchange store I bought a TI-35 and used it for years. The amazing thing was, that from my graduation in late 1970 the slide rule in engineering classes in college had almost completely disappeared just three or four years latter.

[@Kysushanz]

In 1968, I threw away my Slide Rule and did all my Engineering problems usings Napier Four Figure Log Tables. Good thing about that was my opposite page on the exam question had all my log and antilog data so that the examiner could follow everything I did. That year, I got a perfect paper! Master was very impressed, first time he had a student get everything right. I couldn't multiply now on a slide rule and would probably take awhile to sort out my logs. !

[@opal177]

The nice advantage of slide rules is that they don´t need batteries. Apart from several long ones shown here, I got a nice pocket size one, in the shape of a disk.

[@kenfrank2730]

My 1973 high school physics teacher told us slide rules were better than pocket calculators. No batteries needed and they could do more functions.

[@stephenmoulton1364]

Great points. I learned to use a good slide rule long before I bought my HP-41CX. Like you said, they required some mental math, especially to keep track of the decimal point and the number of zeros. Retaining that skill still prevents getting garbage answers with a calculator. To this day, still use the slide rule on my Breitling watches.

[@bertnijhof5413]

I used it at College from 1963-1967 studying Electrical Engineering. We used it e.g together with the diagrams of Pentodes and Triodes to calculate vacuum tube amplifiers. After my conscription, in 1969 I worked at Philips Data System testing prototypes of Main Frame Computers and I never used a side ruler anymore. Nice anecdote; In the last year we learned about transistor amplifiers and we did see the youngsters walk around with loud transistor radios. Consequently the prof told us to concentrate on achieving max power and less on the effects caused by the more curved transistor diagrams.

[@bitsofwisdom460]

Ah yes, vacuum tubes... Another great old underappreciated topic. My father was an electronics tech in the Navy in the late 50s. He brought his textbooks home. They were written at a reasonable level and I was a good reader - ahead of grade level. When I was in grade school I found those and taught myself basic electricity and electronics from those books. By junior high I was tearing apart old TVs to harvest the audio sections and make my own amps. They weren't fancy, but I could tinker with the tube circuits and learn. To me, the great thing with tubes was if I messed up a calculation they were forgiving. There were times when I accidentally lit up the tube like a light bulb and quick pulled the power. I could fix the circuit and the tube would still work. If I did that with a transistor, it would just silently go pffft and die.

[@leonvanderlinde5580]

I still own one I used in the 1970's. It still works 100%.

[@Hipyon]

And the battery hasn’t gone flat! 😊

[@MervynPartin]

I had to use a slide rule throughout my engineering course at college, although we did use hand-cranked mechanical adding machines for one of the exams. Like you, I also had a 6 inch pocket slide rule. It was remarkable how much could be done on these simple devices. I bought my first electronic calculator (a 4 function Casio) in Japan for Y20,000 in 1973, but I still kept my slide rules for a few more years.

[@joekofron609]

When using a slide rule change all numbers to powers of ten. Then will have no problem keeping track of decimals.

[@petem6291]

This brings back memories of my father when I was a little kid watching him using his slid rule and he also had and adding machine on his desk that he used as well he was and accountant,,, he would have been 85 ,

[@whiteyfarm]

I started college in 1965. There were no hand held calculators for any price then. I paid $36 for a 12" slide rule from the college book store. I remember that amount because it was a lot of money for me back then. By 1970 when I was in the army we had a Friden calculator that had a 4 " video screen and it had a 4 line memory and I think it was accurate to about 10 digits. It cost several thousand dollars. 5 years later I bought a digital watch with led read-out for $10 bucks. A good TI calculator was $20 bucks, they still are. God bless calculators. They are now $1 buck at the dollar store.

[@snort455]

I learned it in grade school. Slide rule got me thru college 1973. Calculators available later. Slide rule was a huge advantage for me. A plastic Pickett slide rule was $2.

[@ab-du6sw]

I graduated high school in '63. I had a Pickett Trig rule in HS. In the Navy I got a Pickett electronics 'rule and bought a Sun-Hemi 'rule when I got to Japan. I have about 8 or 9 'rules now, 2 of them circular, 1 a binary rule. The nice thing about 'rules is they don't require batteries and you can take the slide out and use it to make a logarithmic graph. They have also outlasted a lot of calculators. The Oughtred Society is THE goto place for Slide Rule info. You can buy many different kinds, even make your own, from Sphere Research in Canada.

[@robertewalt7789]

My father, a chemist, gave me a slide rule when I started high school in 1963. But it was circular! It could fit in a shirt pocket. He also gave me a book of trig tables, log tables, etc. Also very useful.

[@bitsofwisdom460]

As a college student, I had an engineering job in automotive. We had calculators, but my manager showed me the corporate book of trig and log tables. He said that when the company bought their first mainframe (1950s?), they used it to create their own book to test out the new computer by running all the calculations.

[@gregorystrohmeyer3023]

After high school, in the mid 80s and early 90s, I worked at my Grandfather’s machine shop during the summers. Calculators were available and affordable but my Grandfather insisted that his machines knew how to use a slide rule. He taught me and I still remember how to use it. The slide rule that he gave me is proudly displayed in a shadow box and hanging on my wall. I used a slide rule, in the early 2000s, to take my ham radio test using a slide rule instead of a calculator.

[@kenvalentine5341]

I still have my father's 20-inch slide rule, which he used in college in the mid-1930s and I used in college during the late-1960s. It is capable of 4-digit accuracy in the low numbers and can do trig functions as well as multiplication and division..

[@brucematthews6417]

ONE student in my final year of tech college in 1976 for electronics had an early HP35 full scientific. And a few had the early TI calculator that did square and square root along with the basic four functions. The rest of us plugged through with our trustly slide rules. I still have my fancy 18 scales two sided plastic wonder toy I used to get through high school and Tech College on display. 71 years old. Thanks for bringing it all back with your video.

[@dh14785200]

I still use one in financial work! The slide rule is great for continuous-time calculation. If a number is changing a lot, I could type it into my calculator over and over again every time something changes, but it’s easier to have a slide rule there and just bump it one way or another to track results from small price movements.

[@jodydoakes8754]

I graduated HS in '63. My engineering education at a Big 10 school and my first several working years were entirely with a Post Versalog slide rule. I saw my first electronic calculator around '65. It was massive and had 5 or 6 Nixie tubes for display. I think it did add, sub, mult, divide, nothing else.

[@WelshRabbit]

I love my hand-me-down K&E log log duplex decitrig. I was a poli sci major and later law school, but I loved carrying my sliderule to class.

[@philrulon]

My Old Man taught me to use these when I was 6 or 7 years old, 1965 or so. I still retain most of his, significant, collection of various types. I still use them from time to time. Once, several years ago, I brought one to a Sunday school class that I was teaching. The youngsters were fascinated that something with no batteries, no display panel, could be such a powerful calculating tool. It’s worth mentioning that we owe the existence of these to John Napier, a Scottish mathematician in the late 1500s. Napier also developed logarithms, the mathematical principle on which slide rules are based.

[@JosephWood1941-iz6mi]

I attainedy engineering degree in 1965. Slide rules, log/trig tables and basic arithmetic were my only tools until calculators became commonly used. I still own three silde rules.

[@russelbaird3342]

Still have mine also . I get it out every now and then just to refresh my brain bucket . I believe that we should practice some of the “ old ways”, just incase they may be needed.

[@rexmyers991]

I had a Post Versalog slide rule in Engineering school (1962). It had a nice leather case attached by a clip to my belt. We looked like nerdy gun slingers walking around campus. As a professional pilot, I used the E6B circular slide rule to calculate all manner of time, rate, distance, fuel consumption, etc. calculations all while holding the flight control with the other hand.

[@KindCreature1]

I knew what a slide rule was, but never learned to use one. Thank you for posting this video.

[@lenzielenski3276]

My father taught me some basics when I was a kid over 50 years ago. Still have that slip-stick.

[@RevMarket]

Still have mine from Aviation High School in Long Island City, NY

[@armchairtin-kicker503]

Although my first calculator was a HP-25 that I purchased in 1975, the latest being a HP Prime Graphing Calculator, I have since amassed a collection of slide rules and I am a member of the Oughtred Society. Yes, these days, slide rules are collector's items, some being quite expensive, especially the circular ones.

[@garypillischafske1425]

Used this to figure wave propagation for designing Antenna in the 60’s. So simple, easy and no batteries!!

[@larrygreen262]

I still have a slide rule and my draftsman's tee-square and boxed compass set from when I was taking technical drawing in high school in the early 70's.

[@TerryHughes-u4m]

I started Physics at McMaster U in Hamilton, ON in 1964. My slide rule was an essential tool throughout undergard amd Msc years. I still have a 20-inch slide rule-amazing accuracy. I switched to an HP-65 for the PhD.)

[@michi9816]

In 1977 I started an education to become a communication engineer. we had to get a slide rule and learned to use them. at this time the first electronic calculators were affordable. I remember the devices from Texas Instruments. In fact I did not get much experience with slide rules and after some 47 years I am not able to use them.

[@theolddog5129]

I obtained my engineering qualifications between 1975 and 1981. I still have my two slide rules and my first TI-59 programmable calculator with a magnetic card reader.

[@timradde4328]

I had several slide rules back in the day. They were quite accurate before calculators came to be. The SR-71 was designed with them in the late 50s. Pretty amazing tools actually. Wish I still had them now just to have them.

[@johnl2727]

I graduated in 1972 from the U of Illinois with an MS in EE. I used a slide rule during my entire high school and college time. In March of 72 the account exec for HP came to school and gave a demonstration of the HP-35 calculator. $400. It was a marvel. Ten digit accuracy, log and trig functions. One feature people rarely talk about was the fact that you never had to worry about the location of the decimal point. Pickett went out of business about two years later. I bought a used HP-35 for $225 in 74 from an accountant who just bought a new HP-80. I went to the Chicago HP office to buy an extra battery pack. In the display room was the new HP-45. I was so astounded by the ability of it to do polar to rectangular conversions I sold the 35 to an associate the next day for $225 and ordered a 45. $400. Bought an HP-55 eighteen months later. I have a collection of over a dozen Pickett slide rules of various sizes and scales that I picked up at flea markets. I always considered Pickett's to be the Cadillac.

[@clarencegreen3071]

The first "electronic slide rule" I had access to was an HP-35 in 1972. It cost $400.

[@prsearls]

I still have a couple of slide rules from college; I have one of Dad's too, a K&E. One had to be careful with the hairline and how you read it but it was very accurate. I had a career as a pilot and we had circular calculators for solving aviation problems including navigation (the E6B). I flew jets with a shirt-pocket sized one, a Jeppesen, that was very handy before electronics. I still have them although they are relics now (just like me).

[@stevenlitvintchouk3131]

When I started high school, there were no electronic pocket calculators yet. As a birthday present, my parents bought me a top-of-the-line Pickett N4-ES metal slide rule with *34* different scales. We students didn't get our first electronic calculators--four-function Casios that could just do arithmetic--for another year or two.

[@rickkwitkoski1976]

Yes. I have used these. Still have 2 of them. They work well.

[@powellmountainmike8853]

When I was in electronics school in the Navy, we used slide rules for our calculations. I had a Pickett Electrolog . I still have it, and the three booklets that came with it explaining how to use all the different scales.

[@StephenDAgostino-n3o]

My dad taught me to use one when I was about 10; he gave me one of his and a thin green book about how to use it. When I got my first calculator it did multiplication and division so I no longer used the C and D scales; but still use it for square roots and logarithms. Finally I got a TI SR-71 scientific and put down my trusty slide rule.

[@somedutchguy7582]

My dad, a mechanical engineer, used to own a slide rule. He tought me how to use it in the early eighties. Impressed a few highschool teachers with that knowledge. Wouldn't know one end from the other nowaday, though.

[@davidpayne3815]

I had one that I used in school in the UK in the late 60 /70's. Mine was a 12" British Thornton. I also had a book of logs and trig tables. Still have both of them. My life course didn't include maths, so they went away and rarely see the light of day.

[@stihl0256]

My college days were all slide rule, saw my first four function calculator on my first job in 1973 or so. It was $400. By 1980 or so we were getting them in our laundry detergent boxes as bonus gifts.

[@NetMaestro2009]

I still have one! Used it starting high school in the mid 70s.

[@brucebellows7772]

I still have one, I took it to work recently to show it to an engineering student, he didn't have a clue what it was. Near the end of high school programable calculators were being introduced, we weren't permitted to use them on exams because we could preload them with formulas.

[@danielcarroll3358]

I started university in the fall of 1964, so of course I used a slide rule. When the HP-35 came out in 1972 I immediately bought one. There was a waiting list, but only for a few months. And it cost $395.00 plus tax, $2,948 in 2024 dollars. EVERYONE wanted to play with it as the university hadn't received one yet. By the time they went through their internal paperwork they had a six month wait. I was an adjunct lecturer (spare tire) in the evening school at the time so I interacted with lots of students learning electronic design, a course for scientists, not engineers. I remember one student was so excited he dropped the calculator and then reflexively punted it down the corridor... the look on his face. :) And remember, it could do arithmetic, three trig functions in both directions and various log functions only, no programming. It used an LED display, so its run time was in singe digit hours, but was rechargeable.

[@crosslink1493]

I've got about a dozen of them. Learned to use the basics in my freshman math class in high school in the early 1970s, figured out more as I went along through school, and used it throughout college in the late 1970s-early 1980s as a chemistry major (scientific calculators were too expensive back then).

[@glenndickey4223]

You could do a whole series on the old style calculators. I remember the engineering students walking around with the leather slide rule scabbards hanging from their belts. I got a bamboo slide rule with a plastic covering. It was a log, log, deci, trig unit. The bamboo was supposed to be more accurate than the plastic ones. There were books out on how to calculate how good or badly inaccurate your slide rule happened to be. Problem with the plastic ones was the slide tended to get crooked after a while and your accuracy would be off. Prior to the hand held calculators were the desk calculators running on 110 volts. After you punched in the numbers and hit the calculate key the Frieden units would start to whirr, then go ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk unit they finally finished the calculation. Because of the lack of calculators my statistics class had a whole chapter on how to manually sort data. We'd spend hours doing data sorting. Now, you just put the data in an Excel spread sheet, press the enter key and the data is sorted. And, of course, Excel does a lot of statistics work as a matter of course. We'd spend hours looking through a data list to find highest/lowest numbers. Spend a lot of time calculating average. Now, all done in less than a second by the Excel sheet. Ah, the good old days! ... Not!

[@agd7159]

this brought back memories for me too as i was doing Industrial arts subjects in high school and all we got was slide rules to do all the calculations. I still have mine in great condition. Its a Kent 309 Student and still works fine. As you mentioned when calculators first came out in the early 70s I wanted one because i was racing pigeons at the time and needed to calculate accurate velocities. I got a remington Casio for christmas . Cost a huge $52 australian back then was very expensive, and it only did the 4 basic calcs. When i went to Uni i got a Texas Instruments Programmable Calculator and that was great. Still have that too and it works but the mag strips (where you saved the programs) don't read to well now.

[@wordsmithgmxch]

Ah, the venerable slide rule, or "slip stick". First a K+E (Keufel and Esser) bamboo model; later, one of the broad, yellow, aluminum log-log-duplex things. Carried it in a leather holster hanging from my belt. We were SO cool. (Started college in fall '65.)

[@stihl0256]

Probably a Pickett. That is what I had. Some favored aluminum, others wood or bamboo. At least with the Pickett you could always use it to change a tire, they said.

[@wordsmithgmxch]

@@stihl0256 Yup, a Pickett, that's it. Thanks, stihl0256! Good times!

[@ceejay0137]

I had an Otis King cylindrical slide rule which had scales around six feet long, wrapped around in a spiral. It didn't do trig functions but the accuracy was 4 to 5 significant figures depending on where on the scale you were.

[@tonyg6827]

I couldn't remember what it was called, but I remember using one at school. We also had a little printed booklet of Log tables. Those were the days, BC (Before Calculators)!!

[@hardlygamaliel455]

I also used a slide rule in high school. My sophomore year in college, I bought a TI SR-10 calculator- it did addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, reciprocals, squares and square roots. No trig or logarithm functions. I photocopied log and trig tables from the CRC Handbook (reduced of course) and taped them to the back of the SR-10.

[@keithc9768]

This is what we used in the Navy's Nuclear Power training program in 1973. If you could afford a calculator you could do your homework on them but you had to use the slide rule on tests so you had to learn how to use it anyway. I still have the one I used when I went through the training program.

[@RAG981]

I was at secondary school in the sixties, and while I did have a slide rule for quick calculations, the calculating aid de rigeur was my log book. All calculations in exams had to show your log working, and wow you had to be good at adding and subtracting to use them quickly. They mainly gave answers to 4 figures which you reduced to 3, but it was possible to find logbooks with more .

[@bunkerhill4854]

I still have my first slide rule too. I got it in 1964. I think it still works, but I haven’t used it in a while. I suppose the battery would need a recharge to get it (or me) going.

[@peterwhyte-zl1kv]

The first thing I was handed when I joined a wire-manufacturer was a 2-foot slide rule. In that industry one deals with conversion from diameter of the wire to its length; and change in diameter to reduction in cross sectional area. Even more hairy, the from percentage of the coating (zinc, tin etc) to the substrate wire, to the change in the diameter of the wire. These were a doddle with a slide rule, but not so easy with a calculator. And with log tables, with which i grew up? Oy vey!

[@KarstenPilested]

In the Kennedy Space center i was in a group of people listening to the story about the first space flig 9:26 hts. When we were told that in these old days all calculations were made by slide rulers, the person next to me said that he still did his calculations with a slide ruler, i looked at him and asked if it was the circular specially made for calculations of the values of electronic components, he said yes. I do the same and we could agree that it is actually faster than a calculator and the results are as accurate as they need to be when you are going to use the nearest standard value of the component anyway.

[@mitchellwhite5928]

I competed in slide rule events across Texas while in high school. I was the last person to use this tool in chemistry classes at my college. I currently have over 200 rules in my collection....

[@BrianFields]

I was in high school in the late 70's-early 80s. At the beginning, I remember we could NOT use calculators on exams, but we could use slide rules. By graduation, almost every one had and were allowed to use the standard TI-30.

[@kensmith5694]

Not only do I have one of those, I still know how to use it. There are some very important things you learn when you learn how to use one. Multiply and divide can become add and subtract Numbers to powers can become multiplies and divides then can become adds and subtracts.

[@Mike500912]

Yes - used one at school in the 1960's - still have it.

[@lennartbenschop656]

As of 1981 we were still taught how to use slide rules in The Netherlands at our secondary school. Not used it significantly as scientific calculators had already overtaken them.

[@garyradtke3252]

My Dad was a contractor and spent his evenings figuring bids. He had a large electro mechanical adding machine and sometime in the late 60's had an electric mechanical calculator that was noisy as heck when doing division. It might work for 15 seconds as I remember to do division. The mechanical digits would roll like a slot machine and under the plastic lens the face over the number discs or drums would osculate back and forth. Then he bought an electronic calculator sometime in the early 70's that used 8 digit vacuum tubes with with 10 digits inside each tube that lit up an orange glow when excited. It was quiet and fast. I would sneak to the basement when he wasn't around to do my math homework. He also used a slide rule before the calculators.

[@gwesco]

I had a yellow fiberglass K&E that I used in 1964 for some of my first college classes. We used to call them "slip sticks" and there was also a round version. My first electronic calculator was a 4 function that was about $25.

[@Qkano]

I still have mine - the big desk one and the six-inch pocket sized one - and the batteries never run down!

[@dcstrng1]

Still haven't mastered a VOM, but a slide rule was part of my first real job, in my late-teens calculating weights, polar moments and the like in the aircraft industry... long ago...

[@Buurtspoor]

Yes, 2 x 2 is approximately 4. I learnt that in 1966. Still have one, never used it after tech college.

[@spaceranger3728]

I got through my 1st three years of college with my slide rule and CRC Math tables. For fun, we would go to the computer center to use the calculators which were Nixie-tube Wangs that shared a common processor box full of trig functions. One thing slide rules really teach is an appreciation for orders of magnitude that just doesn't come out when looking at 8 digits on a display.

[@germanjohn5626]

I still use mine, if there is ever a shtf scenario, having one and know how to use it will be very valuable.

[@jimf671]

The slide rule is a quick and simple method for adding logarithms to get a multiplication product. When John Napier discovered logarithms in the early 17th century, he also invented calculating rods called bones but others later streamlined use of logarithms with the slide rule. It was an inspiring privilege to walk through John Napier's home every day on the way to lectures or tutorials where we used logarithms and slide rules to do our calculations.