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Before the advent of the scientific pocket calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering. [3] The slide rule's ease of use, ready availability, and low cost caused its use to continue to grow through the 1950s and 1960s, even as desktop electronic computers were gradually introduced.
A slide rule scale is a line with graduated markings inscribed along the length of a slide rule used for mathematical calculations. The earliest such device had a single logarithmic scale for performing multiplication and division, but soon an improved technique was developed which involved two such scales sliding alongside each other.
The International Slide Rule Museum (ISRM) is an American museum dedicated to the preservation and display of slide rules and other mathematical artefacts. Established in 2003 by Michael Konshak, who serves as its curator, [3] [4] the museum houses a collection of slide rules from divers manufacturers and time periods, showcasing the evolution and importance of these instruments in the history ...
The Fuller calculator, sometimes called Fuller's cylindrical slide rule, is a cylindrical slide rule with a helical main scale taking 50 turns around the cylinder. This creates an instrument of considerable precision – it is equivalent to a traditional slide rule 25.40 metres (1,000 inches) long.
Mechanical computers can be either analog, using continuous or smooth mechanisms such as curved plates or slide rules for computations; or discrete, which use mechanisms like pinwheels and gears. [clarify]
The 17th century also saw the invention of some very powerful tools to aid arithmetic calculations like Napier's bones, logarithmic tables and the slide rule which, for their ease of use by scientists in multiplying and dividing, ruled over and impeded the use and development of mechanical calculators [19] until the production release of the ...
The idea of logarithms was also used to construct the slide rule (invented around 1620–1630), which was ubiquitous in science and engineering until the 1970s. A breakthrough generating the natural logarithm was the result of a search for an expression of area against a rectangular hyperbola , and required the assimilation of a new function ...
In measurement, the Coggeshall slide rule, also called a carpenter's slide rule, was a slide rule designed by Henry Coggeshall in 1677 to help in measuring the dimensions, surface area, and volume of timber. With his original design and later improvements, Coggeshall's slide rule brought the tool its first practical use outside of mathematical ...