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The ultimate piece of retro-computing

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40hz:
Quiz:

1. Are you like my great-grandfather? He believed human technology reached it's peak with the introduction of the Model-T Ford and went steadily downhill ever since.

2. Do you miss the days of JFK when men were "real men"; women were "real women"; and the geeks with pocket protectors were "real geeks with pocket protectors"?

3. Do you remember how to use a slide rule? (Assuming you  know what one is.)

4. Do you always have a perverse desire to do things the hard way, even if better alternatives are readily available?

If you answered yes to any of the above, take a minute to check out this link:

http://www.stacken.kth.se/~foo/sliderule/

This is easily the most pointless exercise in Python programming ever conceived.

And also a great deal of fun for all us retro fans. :Thmbsup:

SlideRule

Tired of having to perform tedious arithmetic without aid? Never having the pen and paper necessary for doing long division? Then SlideRule might be the product for you! Good slide rules are expensive and hard to come by these days, but with SlideRule you can always have a state-of-the-art mathematics aid on your desktop. And best of all: it is completely free! (BSD license)
Features

    * Smooth sliding action
    * Multiplication and division
    * Two-digit precision or less
    * Twin scales: A small scale for range and a large scale for precision
    * A sliding cursor for storing intermediate results
    * Stay-on-top technology
    * A friendly yellow color

--- End quote ---



A very cool piece of coding. Utterly pointless...but still very cool. 8)

zridling:
Perhaps your great-grandfather missed tradition more than anything else, something we greatly lack in the 21st century. Instead, our world is lived amidst novelty, the unending desire for the latest, newest thing. Now what's this sliderule thing you speak of, young man? Tell me more of your strange ways....

 :P

40hz:
Actually, the old guy was largely self-educated (like many of his generation) and only had about five or so years of what we would call formal schooling. That said, 'Grandpa Roy' was one of the most educated and intelligent individuals I ever knew.

He was also a bit of a savant. He could do rapid mental arithmetic, speed read a book in under an hour, and had damn near total recall of everything he read. He was also ambidextrous. He could (and often did) write with either hand using an elegant longhand script.

He had no use for what he called "idiot gadgets." He felt things like slide rules just encouraged your brain to be lazy. He used to use logarithms when he was doing heavy math. And as was typical with him, he had apparently memorized a good chunk of the Base-10 tables to save himself the need to look them up.

None of his mental talents rubbed off on me. ;D

Roy was well-liked and respected inside and outside the family circle. He made it to three days short of his 102nd birthday, and was healthy, mentally aware, and physically spry right up until his last day. He died peacefully in his sleep.

Roy never lived to see the advent of personal computing. I sometimes wonder what he would have thought of the Internet?

I'm guessing the crusty old Gent would have thought it another great idea that got spoiled by idiots. ;D

mwb1100:
I once had a cheap slide rule that I goofed around with for a week or two.  I think that even today with calculators, phones, computers, MP3 players, etc. that can all perform arithmetic easily that slide rules should still be introduced to kids at some point in their math education. Slide rules really illustrate the amazing properties of logarithms in a concrete way.

I'm not saying that kids should be taught to be slide rule experts, but that slide rules can be used as tools to teach something about logarithms. Hey, they still use abacuses (abacii?) in kindergarten or 1st grade to teach how addition works, don't they?

Anyway, I suppose it hard enough to get most kids to even pay attention (or even attend) class. But it might help a few 'get' logs.

fenixproductions:
Looks like this "ruler" is not working correctly ;)

Since when 2.7 x 23 = 61?

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