About me
About me
I am one of the last cohort to use Slide Rules in school. The first scientific pocket calculator was invented in 1972, about the time I was in middle school, and before I left university, they were no longer used anywhere.
Slide rules were still being used in high school science classes, in my case, at least up until 1976. The reason was that the rapid transition over to electronic calculators was still working its way through the system. Calculators were still expensive enough that they weren't normally seen at school, though some kids had them. The thinking at the time was that it wouldn't be fair to allow calculators in exams, since not everyone had them. So we trained on slide rules.
When I went to university in 1976, pretty much all engineering students carried calculators, usually strapped to their belts. There were cliques: the HP crowd with their weird RPN calculators were frankly lording it over the rest of us; TI was there, in second place (and really grumpy about it, let me tell you); and then there was the rest of us, carrying the cheaper Japanese calculators that were just becoming available in quantity in Canada.
With the power needs of these LED calculators and battery technology being what it was back in the day, students then had to have some form of contingency plan for their calculator during exams. You didn't want to run out of juice in your applied physics exam. I myself carried a slide rule as a backup, and I also carried replacement batteries.
As I recall, the HP calculator owners were the only cadre that could plug in and recharge. They would therefore race for the good seats (i.e., the parts of the exam hall with access to outlets).
I remember having to resort to my slide rule on a couple of exams because I forgot to bring fresh batteries. A pocket full of even slightly used batteries, back in 1980, was about the same as not having any spare batteries at all, so so it seemed.
I have collected Slide rules from about the 1990s, while living in Calgary. When we returned from Calgary to Ontario, I found a lot of flea markets and antique malls that carried slide rules; most of my collection was sourced here in Ontario. I did and continue to buy from eBay occasionally, but I've not done much collecting of late.
Slide rules are much scarcer at flea markets and Antique malls today. Sites like eBay continue to trade them in quantity.
I assume the disappearance from nearby markets is because the original owners have mostly aged out of the population; fewer slide rules are getting into the hands of antique sellers through estate sales, and whatnot. Nevertheless, slide rules were being made in the millions right up to the moment that manufacturing ceased, so I don't anticipate people will have any trouble finding them for generations.
I began programming paper replicas of scales around 2000, first for Ed Chamberlain's "Goodchild" tables. The Gilson Binary and K&E's Thacher's instrument followed. I did have to dial back my work on PostScript slide rules as working my career advanced. My work environment became more stressful over time, and I basically needed more time in the evenings to unwind.
Nonetheless, I had been writing Pascal programs to generate PostScript files up until recently. Recently, I began experimenting with AI, in an effort to build a Python SR generator that uses text specifications.
These text specifications will ultimately be created by my entering the details in some kind of GUI tool.
I've been training the AI by feeding it information on various Slide Rules already on this site and then having the AI reproduce them (AI creates the text specification and uses the generator to produce the PostScript).
I've used it on a couple if couple of new designs lately.
I will eventually provide my experiences using AI for this purpose...tbc