esrosedotblog

CALCULATED MOVE

Today in Strangelove, when asked to predict how long the leaders of the free world would have to stay underground, the good Doctor pulled out a circular device and attempted to manipulate it. His mechanical hand got in the way, but he did twirl the concentric discs a bit and announce that it would take about a hundred years for the toxic cloud to dissipate.

The same people who do not remember who Keenan Wynn is will probably not know what the device is either. It is a circular slide rule; a regular linear slide rule simply joined end to front. It had concentric slidable pieces and a transparent 'line' to help get accurate readings.

This is pre-computer calculator and you could do quite a bit with it. We all had to have one at MIT. The slide rule salesmen would line up along the walkways during frosh orientation. We also had a lot of people selling desk lights and so on. It was a gauntlet; an open air bazaar for the innocent and naive. I think that is where I bought my rule and my desk lamp!

Anyone can multiply or divide but to do logarithms and find sine and cosine functions and all that shit you would need a slide rule. And even multiplying and dividing or exponentials became instantaneous or nearly so.

As I recall, those who had circular rules were considered just a bit more geekish than those of us who had the regular ones. Besides, the longitudinals could be made with a lot more complex rules.

Mine was simple aluminum which was considered near slumming but I did not care. It was different. I had a lot of investment in being different even then.

The slide rule was like the computer in that garbage in yielded garbage out. In a panic, during a quiz or exam, slippery sweaty fingers and distorted vision would yield different answers when I checked my work and still another when I checked the check. I guess that is why I got aluminum. No water damage to the wood.

God, what an awful time. Well not really. I was having a lot of fun in the big city as well as doing the extracurricular. No slide rules needed for that.