CIE slide rule

I'm posting this in the general d/l discussion forum because it concerns the Cleveland Institute of Electronics even though it has nothing to do with actual distance learning. So sue me.

I took a career diploma and an AAS by correspondence from CIE shortly after the war. (Which war? I ain't sayin'.) Some months ago I saw on ebay a special CIE edition aluminum Pickett "electronics" slide rule. It has special scales for doing some routine but specialized radio related calculations. I bought it because of course I did.

All through High School science classes and such hard science as I took in college, I used, we all used, slide rules. Playing with this one now reminds me just how quick a slide rule can be.

So a question...who all ever used a slipstick? Which brand did you prefer? Do you still know how? Pilots maybe shouldn't count because they all use a pilot's version but I guess we'll listen to them anyway.

You iPhone toting youngsters might scoff and sneer but we sent men to the moon using slide rules!

 

Still learned how to use one!!

 

I missed the slide rule by a year. They taught it briefly in 8th grade because we were algebra. I never learned it because I wasn't a very good student back then. Soon after we were using calculators.

 

I never used a slide rule properly, but I had a couple over the years because they looked fun/interesting.

I am currently regretting not purchasing an Isaac Asimov book on how to use a slide rule when I had the chance to do so a couple of weeks ago.

 

NAVEDTRA 14139 includes a chapter on using a slide rule: https://www.constructionknowledge.net/public_domain_documents/Div_1_General/Math/Basic%20Math%20and%20Algebra%20NAVEDTRA%2014139.pdf

 

But that's not Asimov.

 

My first and last encounter with a slide rule was in high-school algebra class, 1958. Learned and forgotten by 1959. Algebra and the slide rule. Had to re-learn the algebra in the 90s - to pass an admission test to get into a college computer study program. But no slide rule. Passed the test, and the program. Forgot algebra again. Doubt there will be a third time...

 

Every time you stare at two sizes of peanut butter, trying to decide which is the better value, you're doing algebra.

 

So THAT's why I can never get it right....

 

Don't know much about slide rules, but Sam Cooke - yeah, Sam had a very special talent. One of the world's most wonderful musical voices - ever. To this day, I listen and I love both the songs and the voice. A life tragically cut short.

 

I don't have to do that, here. There's a rule that supermarkets have to include price-per-quantity on shelf stickers - e.g. so much per 100 grams. All sizes. Maybe that's because most Canadians can't do algebra, I dunno.

 

I'm not sure if it's a rule here but all the stores I shop at here in Iowa have the same thing. It's why I bought a bottle of Admiral Nelson's (1.5 cents/ml) instead of Captain Morgan's (2.1 cents/ml) today.

 

Yeah, but you guys use the metric system, whereas in the US we have the-make-it-up-as-you-go system. So, you can have competing products on the shelf, one breaks down the price per liquid ounce, the other per pint (or something), and sometimes they have their own (can, unit, etc.). How many pecks are there in a hectare?

 

Wow, you have cheap liquor there! That Admiral Nelson's costs about $11.25 a fifth. Here, minimum price for all Class A spirits (over 15% alcohol by volume) is $28 Cdn. Oh yeah, I forgot that's only $21.50 American. Still almost double US price.

Rather than use algebra and currency conversion - I quit alcohol, about 18 years ago and put ALL the money saved in the Credit Union. Straight arithmetic shows me I've salted away about $27,000 Canadian from that one change alone. (That's 2 German beers a day, plus the occasional shot of something else.) Plus I've had way less need for algebra.

 

One of the things that shocked me about moving to the US was how cheap the alcohol is here. Also how available it is. Grocery stores, gas stations, pharmacies, it's everywhere.

 

The stores here do that, too, but they often screw up. Sometimes, it's price per 100g. Sometimes, it's price per kilo. But the people entering information don't always enter it correctly. I was looking at a product the other day where the price per kilo was 9-25€ depending on package. One of the packages was listed as being something like 500/kilo, even though the price and weight weren't that far off from the others. I had to break out the calculator to find out that it was actually about 18€/kilo.

And for non-food items? All bets are off. Example: toilet paper may be per sheet, per roll, or per 10 rolls. Same with laundry detergent. They rarely list a useful cost-per-wash. Knowing the cost per volume isn't that helpful when 100g or 100ml of each product yields different amounts of laundry.

 

Um...Is Canada really metric? I mean, the speed limit signs and groceries are metric but it seems to me that ordinary Canadians use the English system for many routine purposes. Technically the U.S. is metric as well but we've been more successful in resisting a nasty foreign (FRENCH!) invention in our daily lives.

I'm damned if I understand why the world succumbed to a rather impractical Base 10 system of measures created by Enlightenment philosophers obsessed with their own fingers and toes.

Humans are far better at visualizing in powers of 2. Try dividing a pizza into eight slices. Easy. Now do ten slices.

Most popular coin in common use is the quarter, not the decimal dime. Why? Four go into a dollar.

Powers of ten make sense only because our number system is Base 10. This inconvenient historical fact doesn't apply in computer science. They do everything in powers of 2.

End of rant.