An Interactive JavaScript Slide Rule

adit.co.uk

16 points·lebski88··6 comments

Neat! I’ve looked on amazon and eBay where I could buy a slide rule but haven’t been able to find one. One of my professors told the class that he had a teacher who would challenge any of his students to run any calculation on a handheld calculator before he could do it on a slide rule. The students could never beat him even with long complicated equations. Found that fascinating.

There is a similar story in one of Feynman's books of him doing high precision mental math faster than an abacus expert could do the calculations.

> I’ve looked on […] eBay where I could buy a slide rule but haven’t been able to find one.

What have on earth have you been typing in for search terms?

* https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=k%2Be+4081

* https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=k%2Be+4083

* https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=aristo+slide+rule

* https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=post+versalog+ii

* https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=sun+hemmi+262

I have a few slide rules. My favorite type is the one with instructions on the back. Very useful if you only use them once every few years.

If you get one of the fancy ones with dozens of scales it may be harder to use.

There's a 'Professor Herning' whose YouTube channel has both good tutorials on their use, as well as comparing many models (and the various scales they have):

* https://www.youtube.com/c/ProfessorHerning/videos

In case anyone missed this from last week [0]: Illustrated Self-Guided Course On How To Use The Slide Rule

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24028351

Reply on news.ycombinator.com