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#sliderules

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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.

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.

youtube.com/shorts/uy99Jnnfi88

amenzwa.github.io/stem/Computi

Redoing my intro toot as garbage collection (old post auto deletion) cleared out my original.

My name's Pete. I'm a 54 yr old software developer and erstwhile mathematician. I'm a late diagnosed #Autistic male. Cishet but probably somewhere on the #ace spectrum.

I am interested in #HomeAutomation via #HomeAssistant on #RaspberryPi .

I collect #SlideRules , #Fossils, #Minerals, #DVDs, #RubiksCubes and #Cravats .. if you can see a connection there you're a better person than me ;)

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.

And just like that, the last detail of the #CardboardComputer falls into place. I had been using a thumbtack as the axis, which wasn't portable, and I was hesitant about a split-pin (which is something people don't always have lying around).

So today I took a regular paperclip, straightened half of it (just with my fingers), pushed the straight part through from the back, and bent it again.

Voilà ! A nice, tight axis.

My DIY circular slide rule side project — an excuse to improve my knowledge of CSS3 transitions and SVG — progresseth apace.

There is now a simple version (just multiplication and subtraction) and an advanced version (square and cube roots). It will also animate the solutions to random basic problems on either.

Coming soon:

  • advanced problems

  • DIY printables and instructions for assembling your own

  • detailed instructions

davidmegginson.github.io/cardb

davidmegginson.github.ioThe Cardboard Computer
#sliderules#DIY#SVG

Among my hobbies, probably the weirdest one is circular slide rules. I was introduced to them 22 years ago when I started flying lessons, and have since branched out from the E6B to non-aviation circular rules. I like them because

  1. they're analogue, and

  2. they remind us of the correct level of precision.

Additionally, they make great fidget toys.

(See also my little website e6b.org/ )

Hi, I'm Pete Little. A 54 year old #autistic male.  I'm a #mathematician by education but a #SoftwareEngineer by employ. Was born in Scotland but currently live with my wife in London.

My hobbies are many-fold. I like #Cycling and am a keen #eBike cyclist.

I collect #Fossils and #Minerals, #RubiksCubes,  #SlideRules, #Cravats and I also collect #DVD and #BluRay movies. (3000+ last count)

Might be easier to say I collect collections :D

I'm interested in #HomeAutomation and #HomeAssistant