At school I was introduced to several calculation aids:
* Slide rule
* Mechanical adder
* IBM Schools Computer
The IBM wasn't actually much of an aid; it had no persistent storage, and you had to program it in hex, from the console.
The mechanical adder was marvelous; you toggled in the arguments using metal wheels, and then cranked a handle on the side to do additions. We actually used them to do sums; there was a cupboard in the maths classroom, with enough machines to have one on each desk.
My father left me a Faber slide rule from the twenties. Wood, with ivory lamination, and a nice, delicately-sprung cursor. We never used slide rules at school to do computations, we only used them to learn how to use slide rules (which was therefore a complete waste of time).
Comments
At school I was introduced to several calculation aids:
* Slide rule
* Mechanical adder
* IBM Schools Computer
The IBM wasn't actually much of an aid; it had no persistent storage, and you had to program it in hex, from the console.
The mechanical adder was marvelous; you toggled in the arguments using metal wheels, and then cranked a handle on the side to do additions. We actually used them to do sums; there was a cupboard in the maths classroom, with enough machines to have one on each desk.
My father left me a Faber slide rule from the twenties. Wood, with ivory lamination, and a nice, delicately-sprung cursor. We never used slide rules at school to do computations, we only used them to learn how to use slide rules (which was therefore a complete waste of time).