Standard issue for young electronics students in 1964.
I’ve still got my Pickett.Leather carring case and to prove I was a true nerd a belt loop. There is still a pocket protector around here somewhere too.
I didn’t turn cool until after I got a job.
Back then calculators four function marvels. Add subtract multiply and divide.
They also made slide rules specially for capacitance and reactance calculations.
At one point, I did know how to use a slide rule, as well as tables of sines, cosines, and logarithms. This may not sound so special, but I’m only 22, so I may be one of the last people to ever learn such things. But I’ve forgotten all that long ago–it’s just not necessary these days.
To the best of my knowledge, tables of sines, cosines, logarithms, and the like are still used in the Irish Junior Certificate Mathematics exams (exams taken by students aged about 15 years of age)… The examination regulations forbid the use of electronic calculators for the mathematics exams (presumably to encourage a reasonable standard of numeracy and mental arithmetic)… Personally, I reckon there’s a lot to be said in favour of the practice, especially as having to use logarithms to multiply etc… gives a better ‘feel’ for how logarithms behave and makes dealing with them on a more abstract level easier…
Kerriensis
I could use one once upon a time—after all, I was in my late thirties when electronic calculators hit the scene. Today, I might be able to kill a bug with one, but that’s about it.
Just stop by your local airport (assuming they have any sort of shop for charts and stuff) and you should be able to find a circular slide rule that’s still in use by pilots that don’t want to pay for a fancy ass digital flight computer.
E6-B is a good one; does everything you’ll ever need. No batteries required.
I was never good at it, and I prefered to do simple multiplication and division with pencil and paper, but for a non-math guy, I could do what I needed to do with one.
I still remember in 1973, when we were reviewing for finals in my Introduction to Management class, one of the engineering types asked if he could use “an electronic calculator” instead of a slide rule. The Arts & Science majors almost lynched him.
Dad had metal ones, my high school had wood, and I had a plastic one (still have it, someplace). I’m not sure what it even looks like anymore, much less how to use it. I suppose if I played around with it, I might remember.
I do remember entering college and being very happy to pay $105 for my first TI calculator - it could do square roots. Cool! And it cost the same as my Olivetti typewriter (last used to painfully pound out a masters thesis).
And I’m not that old. Really. Only 46, dagnabbit!
I had a circular slide rule that I used maybe one year. My first year of college, they had the first electronic calculator that I had seen, it cost about $600 and used Nixie tubes. There was one available per floor and you had to wait in line to use it. Four-function plus inverse and square root, accurate to (if I recall correctly) ten places.
Yes, I can and I still have an old one. I learned in HS in the early 50s and used it some when I took chemistry and physics, but not since. And yes, they gave only three place accuracy (except between 1 and 2, where you could get an idea of a 4th place). There were spiral slide rules where a 10’ scaled was wound around a spiral and that gave 4 place accuracy. But you had to do a preliminary calculation so you would know where on the spiral to read the answer.
The last time I saw one for sale was in Zurich in 1975. It was a beautiful K&E rule and I would have bought it as a museum piece except it cost something like 650 Fr (about $250 in those days) and this was a bit much to spend on a whim. I wonder if they ever sold it.
IIRC, the MIT MUseum Shop in the Student Center still sells slide rules – as museum pieces.
I remember that after cheap calculators came out, I hoped that slide rules might come down in proce, but they never really did. They stayed at their original high price until they disappeared.
Back when slide rules were still common, you could go into your local department store )Newberry’s, or whatever) and buy a cheap but good plastic slide rule for a buck or so. I still have two of these.
People used to argue whether calculators should be used in school, since only rich kids could afford them.
I showed up with a slide rule at an EE class. Nearly brought the house down. The teacher couldn’t breathe for laughing at me. very traumatic.
I’ve still got my plastic one somewhere and I expect I could do a few things on it. I used it for my first 3 semesters of college, then my folks gave me a scientific calculator as a gift.
I need to find my old slip stick and show my kid how it works. Then I’ll tell her about black-and-white TV. 
Hmm, lots of young whippersnappers here.
Back in the day when god wore short pants, and taking homework home involved using a horse and cart to carry all the slates back and forth, we all used Napiers bones.
…and we had it rough…but we were happy, even though we was poor.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/treasures/napier2.asp#top
I learned the very simple stuff as part of a “math enrichment” course back in 5th grade (1976), but I’ve forgotten it all. My dad probably still remembers some – he even had a slide-rule tie clip once, with movable parts and everything.
Mr. S once bought a slide rule in a leather case with the owner’s name in gold letters on it at an antiques shop. He keeps it with his abacus collection.
I can use a slide rule. I can also use an abacus but I’m pretty slow at it. It’s amazing to watch someone who really knows how to work an abacus go at it. Once, when I was is Korea while in the military, I was practising with my abacus at a dance. (It was a square dance and I didn’t have a partner of my own, so I sat out about half the sets) Another dancer, a Korean guy who was learning Western dancing, saw me and came over. He gave me some pointers on it, and I tried multiplying two three-digit numbers. Took me about fice minutes. He kind of flicked his fingers over the instrument and was done in about fifteen seconds.