Slide rules at the movies

Also at the 22:10 mark of the HP YouTube

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Ah yes: “David Packard (seated) and William Hewlett working in their garage in 1938.”

And, of course, in the movie »Hidden Figures«:

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In general, the displacement of slide rules by electronic computers would be an interesting topic. Faber-Castell, a German manufacturer of classic slide rules, launched hybrid slide rules in the early 1970s (upper side electronic calculator, back side slideruler). They had a certain success for a while because examination regulations at schools and universities did not yet allow electronic calculators.

https://www.faber-castell.at/sitecore/Content/Faber-Castell/Home/service/slide-rules

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And this is what the calculating disc of Dr. Strangelove looks like from the front (in German, of course):

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Rubber band stretching generates logarithmic scale and nicely explains how that forms the circular twin of the slide rule.


An animation:

https://dsagal.github.io/circle-of-fifths/logwheel

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