Problem Solved! by Robert Snedden

Author:Robert Snedden [Snedden, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reference
Publisher: Arcturus Digital Limited

The slide rule

Before pocket calculators became ubiquitous in the 1980s (and of course now everyone has a calculator app on their smart phone) every scientist, engineer, architect and high school student would know how to use a slide rule, a calculating tool that dates back nearly 400 years.

It had its beginnings in 1620 when Edmund Gunter (1581–1626) realized that by engraving a scale of logarithms on a piece of wood and then using a pair of compasses to add together two values, he could eliminate the time-consuming process of looking up the logarithms in a table. William Oughtred (1574–1660), one of the leading mathematicians of his day, quickly came up with the idea that if he had two such scales marked along the edges of the pieces of wood, he could slide them relative to each other and thus do away with the need for a pair of dividers. The slide rule was born. Later inventors, including Sir Isaac Newton and the engineer and steam pioneer James Watt, came up with further improvements as the slide rule was refined and developed over the next few hundred years.

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