didds wrote:I still have my slide rule form O-level maths days... and it seems my brother's as well!
I never use it, but every so often I play with it to relive that bygone era. And reaklsiehow pathetically unspecific it is! LOL
You were looky. We 'ad to go out into t'woods and cut down t'trees so we could have our very own log tables. And after we'd finished eating our lunch on them, we had to do calculations on them.
Back in 1964, a sage-green and white Faber Castell slide rule was a sleek and very coveted reminder that it was possible to make things of real beauty that also did something useful. I still have mine.
Mind you, our maths teacher (a proper old-time sadist, with a mortar board and a fearsome reputation for classroom violence) would never let us even attempt a calculation,
with either a slide rule or a log table, until we'd "roughed out" the result we expected to achieve - at least to the point of getting the decimal points in the right places. I hated the old bastard more than almost any of my other teachers, but at least I'll never be the checkout assistant who tries to bill a customer for £3,543 for a bag of courgettes and a couple of lemons.
BJ