#sliderules — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sliderules, aggregated by home.social.
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My quest to understand some of my more esoteric #sliderules continues. "The Wheel" recreational dive planner was, pardon the pun, revolutionary in the late 1980s. It allowed divers to plan multi-level dives, unlike the more conservative charts of the day. You set the depth of the dive at the outer rim, and followed the spiral with the cursor to read maximum dive duration. The other side calculated surface rest times based on blood nitrogen levels.
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My quest to understand some of my more esoteric #sliderules continues. "The Wheel" recreational dive planner was, pardon the pun, revolutionary in the late 1980s. It allowed divers to plan multi-level dives, unlike the more conservative charts of the day. You set the depth of the dive at the outer rim, and followed the spiral with the cursor to read maximum dive duration. The other side calculated surface rest times based on blood nitrogen levels.
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Reminder: if you're a secondary-school teacher, and want to give your students a hands-on activity for learning logarithms, my site
https://cardboard-computer.org/
is free (libre and gratuit) and has no ads, analytics, or tracking cookies. You can download templates to build your own sliderule, and there are instructions and interactive exercises for using it.
(Tell them it's a steampunk calculator.)
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Reminder: if you're a secondary-school teacher, and want to give your students a hands-on activity for learning logarithms, my site
https://cardboard-computer.org/
is free (libre and gratuit) and has no ads, analytics, or tracking cookies. You can download templates to build your own sliderule, and there are instructions and interactive exercises for using it.
(Tell them it's a steampunk calculator.)
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🚀 Ah, the good ol' days when engineers wielded slide rules like wizards with wands. Now, the only magic trick left is making a "403 Forbidden" message appear with the wave of a 🖱️. Maybe they should've used a slide rule to remember the access code! 🤦♂️🔒
https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227 #slideRules #nostalgia #engineering #humor #techHumor #403Forbidden #HackerNews #ngated -
🚀 Ah, the good ol' days when engineers wielded slide rules like wizards with wands. Now, the only magic trick left is making a "403 Forbidden" message appear with the wave of a 🖱️. Maybe they should've used a slide rule to remember the access code! 🤦♂️🔒
https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227 #slideRules #nostalgia #engineering #humor #techHumor #403Forbidden #HackerNews #ngated -
We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How
https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227
#HackerNews #WeBuiltItWithSlideRules #SlideRules #HistoryTechInnovation #LostSkills
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We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How
https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227
#HackerNews #WeBuiltItWithSlideRules #SlideRules #HistoryTechInnovation #LostSkills
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@inaction_figure @VintageProject @concretedog
I'm past midlife, but that doesn't mean I'm past the midlife attractions.I've a predilection for the #Linux and #SlideRules myself, and an even bigger interest in #Telescopes . But there is something to be said for Italian motorcycles.
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@inaction_figure @VintageProject @concretedog
I'm past midlife, but that doesn't mean I'm past the midlife attractions.I've a predilection for the #Linux and #SlideRules myself, and an even bigger interest in #Telescopes . But there is something to be said for Italian motorcycles.
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Hackaday: Sliderule Simulator Teaches You How To Do Calculations The Old Fashioned Way. “Ever wanted to know how engineers made their calculations before digital calculators were on every workbench? [Richard Carpenter] and [Robert Wolf] have just the thing—a sliderule simulator that can teach you how to do a whole bunch of complex calculations the old fashioned way!”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/21/hackaday-sliderule-simulator-teaches-you-how-to-do-calculations-the-old-fashioned-way/ -
Hackaday: Sliderule Simulator Teaches You How To Do Calculations The Old Fashioned Way. “Ever wanted to know how engineers made their calculations before digital calculators were on every workbench? [Richard Carpenter] and [Robert Wolf] have just the thing—a sliderule simulator that can teach you how to do a whole bunch of complex calculations the old fashioned way!”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/21/hackaday-sliderule-simulator-teaches-you-how-to-do-calculations-the-old-fashioned-way/ -
Hackaday: How To Use That Slide Rule. “You have that slide rule in the back of the closet. Maybe it was from your college days. Maybe it was your Dad’s. Honestly. Do you know how to use it? Really? All the scales? That’s what we thought. [Amen Zwa, Esq.] not only tells you how slide rules came about, but also how to use many of the common scales.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/22/hackaday-how-to-use-that-slide-rule/
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Hackaday: How To Use That Slide Rule. “You have that slide rule in the back of the closet. Maybe it was from your college days. Maybe it was your Dad’s. Honestly. Do you know how to use it? Really? All the scales? That’s what we thought. [Amen Zwa, Esq.] not only tells you how slide rules came about, but also how to use many of the common scales.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/22/hackaday-how-to-use-that-slide-rule/
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🚨BREAKING: Humanity owes its #survival to slide rules? 🤔🎓 Who knew that waving around a stick with numbers could plant crops and store grains? 🌾 Clearly, if only we had slide rules sooner, we'd all be living in a futuristic utopia by now! 🛸📏
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/ #slideRules #agriculture #innovation #futurism #HackerNews #ngated -
🚨BREAKING: Humanity owes its #survival to slide rules? 🤔🎓 Who knew that waving around a stick with numbers could plant crops and store grains? 🌾 Clearly, if only we had slide rules sooner, we'd all be living in a futuristic utopia by now! 🛸📏
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/ #slideRules #agriculture #innovation #futurism #HackerNews #ngated -
I found my father's crib notes engraved in the base of a slide rule. I managed to decipher one of them, an application of the rule of proportion for calculating temperature dependent resistance of metals. The others I really don't understand. I believe that he was never very good at math - he was good at understanding complex things, knew how to make them organizable - a silent leader.
#generations #cheating #parents #sliderules -
I found my father's crib notes engraved in the base of a slide rule. I managed to decipher one of them, an application of the rule of proportion for calculating temperature dependent resistance of metals. The others I really don't understand. I believe that he was never very good at math - he was good at understanding complex things, knew how to make them organizable - a silent leader.
#generations #cheating #parents #sliderules -
#Accounting, #SlideRules, #penmanship, #shorthand, #typing, #telegraphy, and #carpentry were taught to school children in Burma, well into the 1980s. I think it would be socially beneficial to teach these skills to young American kids, today.
Basic accounting and personal finance are useful skills for adults, and indispensable for college kids wielding credit cards.
The slide rule endows the student with a keener understanding of various functions and, more importantly, always to check one's results, mentally.
Being able to write in a beautiful, cursive script with a fountain pen may now be but a party trick, but it still is an important social skill.
Shorthand offers a massive advantage in note taking. Given that every child learns to type social media posts well before they first learn to speak, proper typing technique should be taught to children, for efficiency, for preventing repetitive stress injuries, etc.
Telegraphy is valuable in aviation: VOR and NDB navigation aids transmit their identifiers in Morse code. And Morse code is still a thing in the amateur radio scene.
Teaching kids basic carpentry, like making a rough table, is of limited utility, but they will never forget that experience of making something out of raw materials.
Above all, these old skills are cool, at least in some circles. And if nothing else, these activities will surely keep them off social media.
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#Accounting, #SlideRules, #penmanship, #shorthand, #typing, #telegraphy, and #carpentry were taught to school children in Burma, well into the 1980s. I think it would be socially beneficial to teach these skills to young American kids, today.
Basic accounting and personal finance are useful skills for adults, and indispensable for college kids wielding credit cards.
The slide rule endows the student with a keener understanding of various functions and, more importantly, always to check one's results, mentally.
Being able to write in a beautiful, cursive script with a fountain pen may now be but a party trick, but it still is an important social skill.
Shorthand offers a massive advantage in note taking. Given that every child learns to type social media posts well before they first learn to speak, proper typing technique should be taught to children, for efficiency, for preventing repetitive stress injuries, etc.
Telegraphy is valuable in aviation: VOR and NDB navigation aids transmit their identifiers in Morse code. And Morse code is still a thing in the amateur radio scene.
Teaching kids basic carpentry, like making a rough table, is of limited utility, but they will never forget that experience of making something out of raw materials.
Above all, these old skills are cool, at least in some circles. And if nothing else, these activities will surely keep them off social media.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on #SlideRules—the interviewer has never heard of the slide rule.
I'm proud to say that mine was the last batch of students who used the slide rule in our #engineering school in Burma, way back in the early 1980s.
I used the government-issued Aristo 0968 log-log duplex engineering straight rule and the hand-me-down Faber-Castell 8/10 circular rule. But my all-time favourite has always been the Hemmi 130W advanced Darmstadt—simple, elegant, compact, powerful.
https://youtube.com/shorts/uy99Jnnfi88?si=65DhbMXMIdB-SBU9
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on #SlideRules—the interviewer has never heard of the slide rule.
I'm proud to say that mine was the last batch of students who used the slide rule in our #engineering school in Burma, way back in the early 1980s.
I used the government-issued Aristo 0968 log-log duplex engineering straight rule and the hand-me-down Faber-Castell 8/10 circular rule. But my all-time favourite has always been the Hemmi 130W advanced Darmstadt—simple, elegant, compact, powerful.
https://youtube.com/shorts/uy99Jnnfi88?si=65DhbMXMIdB-SBU9
https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/
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What I found at the back of a drawer last night. Here it's lined up (more or less) to multiply by 2.
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What I found at the back of a drawer last night. Here it's lined up (more or less) to multiply by 2.
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I love Slide Rules (and other ways I’ve alienated friends).
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One of my favorite slide rules is the Charpentier Calculimètre. Something about circular slide rules makes understanding mantissa rollover easier, which helps a lot when I try to teach people.
This example dates from the 1910s, I believe.
Anyway, in this image I have the index at 3.14 which, you can see, approximately equals 22/7.
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To this day, trainee pilots have to master the #CircularSlideRule in order to do calculations for various tasks. Before flying was ever developed, such #SlideRules were in common use.
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In the list of things that made me happy today is the discovery that Mastodon has an active #sliderules hashtag
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A history of cylindrical slide rules in the U.S.
Honesty compels me to say this is via a Hacker News repost, but I don't support Ycombinator effective altruism crap, so here's the direct link.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/slide-rules/cylindrical-slide-rules
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The genius of this sliderule case. #sliderules