nobody asked…

This post started back in mid-December, 2005, in an email exchange with Stu Savory. We reminisced about slide rules, which unfortunately, or not depending on your perspective, have gone the way of buggy whips and spats.

No, actually this post started back in the fall of 1960 when I bought my first slide rule, required equipment for engineering students at The University of Tennessee. They cost a bloody fortune, somewhere around $25 or $30 as I recall, and there were always a few slightly used ones available from students who had already seen the light and switched majors to pursue their personal fortunes in Library Science or Animal Husbandry, whatever the hell that is. Not me. I stayed the course through five arduous years and became a graduate Electrical Engineer with my log-log swinging jauntily from my belt.

That first fall term I surveyed the choices in the UT Bookstore trying to make up my mind between the K+E, the gawd-awful yellow Pickett, and my ultimate choice, the 10 inch Post VersaLog. It was sexy (yeah, I’ve was treated and cured many years ago), made of bamboo, had easy to read scales and numbers, and — the real kicker — came in a royal red velvet lined leather case which was a burgundy color. Oxblood I think they called it. Man, striding across campus swinging my big VersaLog was sure to attract attention from those of the female persuasion!

The primary reasons for using bamboo for slide rule construction were it’s dimensionally stability and the fact that it is self-lubricating. Even so, the savages of too much humidity and heat, and too many hard knocks (think: college student) will take an eventual toll. Like the slide won’t. So somewhere around my junior year I jumped on the bandwagon with many of the other engineering students and got one of the new Aristo MultiLog plastic slip-sticks from Charvoz-Roos. It was guaranteed for life not to warp, bind or get out of whack. I was never sure if they meant the life of the slide rule or my life. Mine ain’t over, but it isn’t either. Still slides as easily as the day I got it, but I never did figure out how to measure “whack”.

Senior year saw the addition of a 6 inch pocket model of the Aristo plastic job. Over the years I have accumulated a few others, some special purpose, some quite nice, but never one with the feel of the Aristos. I still have all of them except the original Post rule. Many times I have regretted disposing of that one — just like my 1963 Corvair (Nader was and is an idiot!).

My research for this post led to a surprise. I knew that conventional slide rules were no longer manufactured, displaced in the 1970s by hand-held electronic calculators with amazing capabilities. What I did not expect to find is that there is a brisk collector’s market for the slip-sticks of yore, with some models commanding hundreds of dollars. Until someone comes along with an offer that will finance my retirement condo, I’ll probably just hold onto mine, pull it out once or twice a year to admire it and make sure it still works correctly.

Footnote: If you want to learn more about this ancient calculating instrument or the cult that still gives it the slip, start with visits to The Oughtred Society and Eric’s Slide Rule Site.