Keuffel & Esser slide rules

[mmcirvin]

Some time ago I mentioned my first calculator, a surprisingly powerful Omron 86SR from the mid-seventies. My dad had just gotten one for himself and was a convert.

Shortly thereafter, he gave me his now-suddenly-obsolete slide rule. It was a fancy wooden one with a (cracked) glass cursor and cryptically lettered scales all over both sides. I lost it long ago and for a long time I'd forgotten what brand it was, but here's a collector's page for them. It was a Keuffel & Esser duplex:

http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/ke-sliderule.html

I remember the L-shaped end pieces and the red leather case it came in.

Only recently did I actually learn what all those scales meant (note the K+E rule in the picture). It turns out that the letter labels, though arcane, were standardized across models, and you could use them to find trig functions, powers and logarithms, among other things.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...My Omron actually looked like this (http://www.vintagecalculators.com/Omron86SR_1.jpg); it didn't have the funky orange case.

[plorkwort.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite-ever slide rule brochure/manual.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

"You've got to look ahead for 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years..."

Well, maybe not 40.

Note also the use of the word "bugs" in the modern sense, contra the legends about it originating with digital computers.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...I think mine was one of the more complex ones with log-log scales. I don't remember whether the trig scales were decimal or degrees-minutes-seconds.