Summer Puzzler

I think it's a spotting scope - suitable for Bondi Beach!
Uncle - what's a 'slide rule'?
Dr Duck

 

Sort of like a scientific calculator without keys or graphing.

When Janko was younger and TV was black and white, nerds were identified by possession of a slide rule.

My brother knew how to use one. I determined that I would never take a course where I would need one.

 

Cylindrical slide rule, not circular.


I'm going to hazard a guess:

It appears to be an Otis King Model L cylindrical slide rule.

 

Dr Bear

The answer to the "summer" puzzler is easy (although it is only summer in half the world, so somewhat of a misnomer).

It is a portable device for reading the ambient air pressure. One takes the device out of the pouch, releases the cap, and you can then read the scale on the sliding internal cylinder. The photo shows the internal cylinder fully extended.

Right? (Well, a good guess)

(Some may remember me as an occasional poster stretching back to the AED days, although this would be my first post here for many months. But I continue to lurk occasionally, although the threads get a bit repetitious. I may read one in fifty. I have signed up part-time as a PhD student at the University of Tasmania, which is only 5 minutes drive from my home. It is essentially external [if not distance] as I do all study at home and mainly correspond with my supervisor by email. There are no classes or compulsory attendance requirements, although they do expect to see my face from time-to-time. I tend to meet my supervisor in coffee shops, which is all rather pleasant. There are also no fees - what a great country Australia is. My department is the Faculty of Arts, School of Government and my broad research area is "issue ownership in politics". The web link to the University department is http://www.utas.edu.au/government/ . If you follow the "post grad" prompt you will find me on the list of research students along with an email address. If anyone wants more info, please feel free to drop me an email.)

Kind regards

 

Its the baton or scepter that the provost or university president uses or carries for unknown purposes at graduation. Otherwise, it is a weapon used by professors at certain urban campuses of the California State University.

 

Diploma holder and graduation baton.

 

We have a winner!

Bill Blum: Cylindrical slide rule, not circular. I'm going to hazard a guess: It appears to be an Otis King Model L cylindrical slide rule.
-----------------------------------------------

Well done, Mr. Blum! The spiral slide rule was a triumph of technology, in which the C & D scale went 'round and 'round the tube, 26 times, thus were more than four feet long, providing slide rule accuracy to two or even three decimal points.

It did not, of course, survive 1972 when the first electronic calculator became available.

I've had mine since 1972, but was quite unaware that it was an Otis King.

Needless to say, there is a website all about them, with lots of close-up pictures:
http://www.svpal.org/~dickel/OK/OKtypes.html

I'm really curious: did you already know this, or was it new research of some sort?

Let me know if you'd prefer a Bears' Guide 15th ed., or our new silly cookbook, Not Your Mother's Cookbook (http://www.slgbooks.com/books/nym.htm), or our long-established one, How to Repair Food (www.tenspeed.com) -- and where to send it.

John Bear
[email protected]

 

Re: We have a winner!

Hogwash! I know a prototype for a new kind of Ethiopian ear picker when I see one.

 

The red tube with the apparent spillage is...?

 

Re: We have a winner!

Well, I knew it was a cylindrical slide rule on sight.... but it took me about two minutes of looking through my slide rule books to figure out that it was probably an Otis King.

No Googling Involved.

(And for the record, I'm only 30-- explaining why I've accumulated so many slide rules is a story that won't really fit here.)

-bill blum

 

I believe that 1972 was when we first started seeing pocket calculators. In 1973 I bought my first pocket calculator for $500 (IIRC). I wasn't allowed to use the calculator in the Chemistry tests though. So I had to still use my slide rule.

 

Damn! I never win anything!

 

The case for carrying it in, with the closure open.

 

Re: Re: We have a winner!

Slide rule book, physics? I don't think we need an explanation.
I think the word NERD will fit just fine.

 

I'm delighted that Bill Blum could actually identify the thing. I'm a total maths/science idiot--I could just see that it had little marks or numbers on it and that it appeared to have movable parts. It looked too elaborate to be a tire pressure gauge, and slide rule was the only other (printable) thing I could think of.

When I was a kid, I recall being screamed at by a maths teacher because I simply could not get the hang of how to use the normal version of a slide rule--or basic algebra, remedial geometry, or much of anything else. Then I got a 650 on the maths SAT and genuinely upset the teachers who considered--no, knew--my complete incompetence. To this day I don't understand how that happened.

Or how I got anywhere close to what this thing was.

Again, congrats to Bill Blum!

 

I think my Uncle should also win a prize - apart from a minor slip by his typist he was pretty spot on!
Well done Uncle.
Dr Duck

 

Ahh..
Time passes so quickly. I remember getting a lecture and demonstration of slide rules of different types in my Chem I class at Berkeley High School (Calif.) in 1956. For that class I bought a Post Hemmi (sp?) for a few dollars; then, for university, a K & E log-log duplex decitrig, which I still have in storage.
As I recall, that was in the $25 range, which was LOTS of money then.
At that time, UC Berkeley did not charge tuition but rather an 'incidental fee'... that fee along with the 'New Student Union Fee' came to under $70 / semester.
John Bear should remember.


David ((Go Bears!!!) ( & Indians)...lol- it may be politically incorrect, but it's MY post!))
B.S. Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley '62

 

Re: Re: We have a winner!

Having two daughters who are Ethiopian, I can assure you that to be a new kind of Ethiopian ear picker it would have to have Brittney Spears and Sarah Michelle Gellar stickers all over it.



Tom Nixon

 

Probably the same way that I did somewhat above average (but nothing spectacular) on my SATs, but apparently nailed my GREs because I began to get letters of interest from MIT and Yale and such. As most of us probably know, it was once the custom (and probably still is) to sell test scores for various subject areas to universities. Given that I was applying to graduate school for linguistics, the pool of candidates was likely smaller.

I tend not to think much of standardized test scores. Too iffy based on too many factors. Now horoscopes...

Clearly, they were only looking at test scores, btw, because I doubt the rest of the "package" would have looked good enough to them. Nor, even if it was, would I have been remotely interested in schools like those.


Tom Nixon