How to feel old in 2 seconds flat

[Stuart]

Wonder if anyone today knows what a slide rule is?

[Alex Gaskin]

27 minutes ago, Stuart said:

Wonder if anyone today knows what a slide rule is?

I know what they are, but have never used one, or know how to use them. I think I only saw one a couple times at school, and that was being used by a teacher.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

48 minutes ago, Stuart said:

Wonder if anyone today knows what a slide rule is?

 

I've not used one since the first term of university where they more or less made us use them before telling us to "throw them away" we'd never use one again, cause now we had computers!

[djm]

When I was in the Cubs one of the tasks we were set was to call Akela from a public phone box which was a fairly complicated task for an 8 year old knowing when to put your penny in and when to press button A or B etc.

Of course very few people had the luxury of a telephone in your house and no television either (we didn't).

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

2 hours ago, djm said:

When I was in the Cubs one of the tasks we were set was to call Akela from a public phone box which was a fairly complicated task for an 8 year old knowing when to put your penny in and when to press button A or B etc.

Of course very few people had the luxury of a telephone in your house and no television either (we didn't).

 

Didn't have the A/B buttons by that time, but I'd forgotten all about the "how to use a phone box" evening, at Cubs, I seem to remember getting a patch for my uniform sleeve!!

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

5 hours ago, Stuart said:

Wonder if anyone today knows what a slide rule is?

I have both a standard slide rule and one of these:

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

Forgotten how to use either though... 

I learned how to use a slide rule from a teaching machine which was a sort of slide viewer that responded to choices on a limited range of buttons.

 

A bit like this one on this web page https://www.alamy.com/jan-01-1963-the-question-and-answer-machine-new-advance-in-automatic-image69404037.html

[Kingster]

21 hours ago, djm said:

very few people had the luxury of a telephone in your house

Aged 6 I recall we had the first one in our street - the neighbours would often queue to use it with cash in hand, but only when the “party line” was free 🤣

 

My grandson is the same age now and he’s learning how to program lego on an iPad - oh how times have changed…

[pistonbroke]

On 04/08/2023 at 08:21, Man On The Clapham Omnibus said:

I vaguely remember being at either Goodwood or Silverstone and being told (not quite accurately I believe) by my uncle that the driver who had just roared past had only one arm. Archie Scott-Brown. Elders may know about AS-B and when he was active. 

 

He had both arms but only one hand , together with seriously distorted legs , in spite of which he was one of the fastest drivers of his day 

[marka]

Talking of slide rules, is anyone old enough to remember the "log books" at school? Logarithm books? 

I think they pre dated the horrible slide rules, never got the hang of slide rules, mine just stayed in its bland grey plastic case! 😂 

[stephenh]

blue logbooks? I still use mine when I want to work with tangents, cotangents or sines! Surely everybody does, don't they?

[marka]

54 minutes ago, stephenh said:

blue logbooks? I still use mine when I want to work with tangents, cotangents or sines! Surely everybody does, don't they?

That's it the blue ones! Thought they were just school books from the 70's! 😂

[Stuart]

1 hour ago, marka said:

Talking of slide rules, is anyone old enough to remember the "log books" at school? Logarithm books? 

I think they pre dated the horrible slide rules, never got the hang of slide rules, mine just stayed in its bland grey plastic case! 😂 

Mine was orange. I still have it. Although it apparently belonged to someone called Ivan Aylevel back then....... 

[Mark Stanton]

Log tables ...... used at school for my Maths O level ................ never used since, despite my job involving a good chunk of maffs and trig stuff 🤣

[marka]

18 hours ago, Stuart said:

Mine was orange. I still have it. Although it apparently belonged to someone called Ivan Aylevel back then....... 

😁👍