My deepest appreciation to ThinkGeek for making me feel old first thing in the morning. They have recreated the “classic student slide rule” and are hawking them for a pittance of what this paragon of useful technology is worth.
The sad thing is… not only do I remember slide rules, I depended on them to get my physics homework done in high school. Not only do I remember slide rules, those of us who used them were faster than the folks with Bowmar Brain calculators.
I did succumb to the glitter and glitz of calculators and computers, becoming an RPN bigot as any newly minted geek was in the 1970s. (Good thing, too. Have you ever tried to blog on a slide rule?)
Slide rules re-entered my life in 1986 when I took flying lessons. The E6B flight computer is little more than a circular slide rule with special scales for doing some temperature calculations and a special rotating, clear window on the back for solving wind triangle problems. Spock recognized the utility of the E6B, too, using it on the bridge of the Enterprise in Who Mourns for Adonis.
I ended up with two slide rules, my own and my grandfather’s (and my E6B flight computer). My slide rule evaporated years ago but my grandfather’s is still in the basement. And you know what, it still works… no batteries required.
