Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm
talking about.

Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95,
Wang, IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be taught. It sure gave use the
ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid
today what 100 times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.

Just an old fart reminiscing,

Ivan Vegvary

Have a Curta Type II on the shelf, HP 95, IBM XT in the other shop.
I have a special purpose slide rule for the fire service. It has flow
loss, pump pressure/volume, and hose loss calculations for rapid use.
Comes in handy if you have multiple pump makes and capacities.

--
Steve W.