Why Collect Slide Rules?
I suppose it does require some comment. In the history of the modern world, probably no other technological instrument was so widely used for so long, only to disappear virtually overnight. The slide rule’s form and features were revised for centuries, and there are probably few people today over the age of 50 who didn’t routinely use one in school or at work at some point in their lives. Yet with the advent of inexpensive pocket calculators in the early 1970s, slide rules quickly went the way of the Dodo. What’s all the more remarkable is that today it is possible to pick up 140+ function scientific calculators for as little as $5! For me, I guess slide rules carry with them a sense of nostalgia for earlier scientific times. When you use one, you get a much better feel for what numbers really mean than when you use a calculator or computer. They are remarkable technological instruments, built with precision and reliability in mind, and are as useable today as the day they were first m
