I've been meaning to dust off my old slide rule for a long time. Learning to use one circa 8th grade made future science so much easier. Had to think of significant figures ahead of time, spend a few moments to plan the computation, and get comfortable with when to approximate and how. Pretty soon I was able to get a sense for what answers ought to be, at least to within a factor of 2-5. Anything outside of that and I knew I'd made a mistake somewhere.
I also loved the old HP calculators of the late 1970s to late 1980s and eventually set the slipstick aside but am ever grateful for what it did for me. And for fellow RPNthusiasts, there is the Museum of HP Calculators at
https://hpmuseum.org/
Comments
I've been meaning to dust off my old slide rule for a long time. Learning to use one circa 8th grade made future science so much easier. Had to think of significant figures ahead of time, spend a few moments to plan the computation, and get comfortable with when to approximate and how. Pretty soon I was able to get a sense for what answers ought to be, at least to within a factor of 2-5. Anything outside of that and I knew I'd made a mistake somewhere.
I also loved the old HP calculators of the late 1970s to late 1980s and eventually set the slipstick aside but am ever grateful for what it did for me. And for fellow RPNthusiasts, there is the Museum of HP Calculators at https://hpmuseum.org/