I was about to do something similar a few hours ago but then realised I’d thrown the darn thing out a few years ago. IIRC there must have been a fairly standard convention amongst manufacturers for the names of the scales once you were beyond A,B,C,D etc.
I think that was the Comptometer, a sort of adding machine that gave access to all numbers on each digit of the numbers entered. It was in it's time a role that needed training in order to use them at speed.
I also think it was a comptometer. It had a grid of 10 rows and 10 columns of numbers so you could select any number between 1 and 99 to use in the calculation. We used to get someone in each year for final accounts to cost out our stock sheets (units x price, then each sheet totalled).
Mine came out to do exponential decay calculations during covid. Has been back in its case since. Limited accuracy was not an issue.
Thinking of sturdy machines with metal casings, much analytical scientific equipment was so constructed with manual controls when I started work in 1980. Many of the operational functions (eg: doors for loading microbalances, etc.) were located on the righthand side of the instrument including rotatory controls. As a lefthander, this was always a tad awkward for me. Nowadays, doors on either sides with centrally placed digital keypad operation make things a darn sight easier.
It now intrigues me even more as to what role my aunt must have been fulfilling during WW2.
She may have been a computer. Back then a computer was a person who did complicated calculations for others.
At school in the 1960s, I had a book of 5-figure tables. But working on road schemes in the early-mid 1970s, we did our setting-out calculations using books of 7-figure tables, which were hardbacks about an inch and a half thick. We finally scrapped our last office copy in an office move around 2006.
Slide rules dropped out of use in the mid 1970s when they were supplanted by electronic calculators, but they'd been in use for many decades before that. Early ones were ivory so presumably were expensive, possibly too expensive for most children to own one of their own. My father inherited one such from my great uncle but sadly disposed of it before I knew of its existence.
But who for and where? Possibly related to the services as she later went to work near Longtown/Gretna.She may have been a computer. Back then a computer was a person who did complicated calculations for others.
Are you intimating that she might have been the target for the V2? (not that a V2 had anything that could be used to target)!
I remember during my time at school we initially used the school’s devices, but were issued with our own slide rule in about 1967, but only because they’d finally become a reasonable price. But it was a much simpler version, (almost pocket sized and plain white), than those in the earlier photos. I used a much more complex slide rule (Thornton?) during my engineering apprenticeship, from 72-76 or so, but quickly replaced that with a calculator for most day to day purposes by about 1982 or so.
Hardly. V-1s and V-2s were fairly broadly aimed at everyone in London for terror reasons. Most probably got within 10-15 miles of central London. If they happened to damage anything of significance to the war effort it would have been a bonus.
Almost certainly not. My younger cousins (who are in their 30s) have literally no idea what a log table is.
Mid 1970s....I would be celebrating my 30th birthday at that time and was married on 5th April 1975, the day before my 30th birthday...
Dr R V Jones, in his book "Most Secret War" explains how the Germans were deceived into reducing the range of the V1s so they fell in less-populated parts of London.
Indeed. A good book.
And a significant proportion of the digital computing power available to the US government at the time.
More advanced computing was available.
I used a book of log tables in my first year or two at secondary school, which was from 1980. They were dropped not long after that. My maths teacher was approaching retirement so, he might have kept on using them from personal preference.
I used them in secondary school as well, in 1989/90. They were available to be used in our equivalent of O-levels (in 1992), but calculators were also allowed so you can guess what most of us chose to use. I believe we were one of the last years to be taught how to use log tables.
Second-hand is where I’d look, eg https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l2632&_nkw=slide+rule&_sacat=412
A few years ago, Faber Castell's German language website still had new, unused slide rules for sale, presumably stored since the 1970s, but I can't find such a link at present.
Along the same line, though lower down the body, routine infant male circumcision has fortunately become much less common.
Think I'd better look after the one I pictured very carefully!!
