Amazing! A few years ago my wife and I went to the top of Mount Washington on a "nice" day in early October: Temperature about +30 deg. F., Wind about 60 MPH, and fog with visibility of 50 yards, or so. Could even walk around the outside the observatory, a little bit.
This is the only way I found to ask the really big questions that your name suggests:
1. Did you wear your slide rule on your belt or just carry it?
2. Did you use a Post (bamboo), a K+E (mahogany), both with ivory or plastic faces or other?
I used a K+E and carried it and also used a circular slide rule in my back pocket so it was always handy. I used both while working in the aerospace industry for a few years because the filling out sheets withing the squares to send for input was too slow. During the development of the early rocket propulsion and rockets, slide rules were common in our office, at Edwards AFB and the cape. We even saw some very strange aircraft at Edwards when we were forced to do some rough surveying or vertical alignment studies (a transit also makes an ideal instrument). We had this when we were sentenced to Edwards and also used it to watch the experiment aircraft come in and move around since we were on the rocky peaks where the NASA acceptance stands were.
Dick
Engineer and international traveler interested in construction techniques, problems and proper design.
CM...you didn't ask, but I carried mine..a Post Versalog (high school graduation present from my sister). Still have it along with my first HP calculator (HP45). Didn't get a calculator 'till my senior year in college.
CM - Neither a Post nor a K&E; I used a 10" top-of-the-line, 34-scale, aluminum Pickett N4-ES. Also had an inexpensive 6" rule in my shirt pocket at all times for "quick" calculations.
Started out wearing the Pickett on the belt but quickly switched to just carrying it.
I used the Pickett in college and while working in aircraft equipment R&D, assigned to Wright-Patterson AFB. About 1973 our office purchased one basic 4-function calculator for about 10 engineers to share.
By 1974, I had purchased a Texas Instrument SR-10 calculator, but it would not do logs, trig, exponentials, etc. My last "big" use of the Pickett was on the PE exam that year. Used the the SR-10 to add / subtract and the Pickett for everything else. A real hybrid mix of digital & analog technology to do the math - but it was good enough.
I forgot about the Pickett slide rule that was favored by the mechanicals and electrical. It is amazing how things have changed through the years. It also makes me realize how old I am since I was involved in the aerospace business during the "cowboy" 60's and was forced to take my PE with a slide rule and pencil in 1967 (no hand calculators were available then).
I still have the slide rule and may hang it on the wall as a memory, but I don't know what to do to do with my first portable computer (45# Compact) since it will take some ugly brackets for support.
This lack or technology forced you to look, think and understand what was going on since there were no canned programs, so you had to anticipate the reaction/performance of the structure before beginning calculations.
The aerospace industry was a great learning experience. We had the opportunity to put accellerometers on every joint of a F1 rocket test stand to record the accelerations. They we borrowed an air frame analysis program from a sister company and used it to determine the loads on all members. After that, we applied the current steel design code to determine the over or under stress due to the dynamic loadings. - It gave a great "feel" for the dynamics since the frequencies of a gimbaling rocket engine are similar to seismic frequencies. The only difference was that the loads went up, but the steel structures were similar. Five years and 2000 miles difference, I was involved in the site evaluation and the D&M engineers did the dynamic site analysis and my old rocket supervisor showed up to over see an site testing using geophones/accellerometers on a grid.
Things continue to change, but the mountain of research is making new records and analyzing recent data difficult and a full time job.
Engineer and international traveler interested in construction techniques, problems and proper design.
I don't remember the make of my first slide rule, but it disappeared soon after I came to the States so I bought a Pickett. I still have the Pickett and a pocket sized Japanese model. My first calculator was the SR50 and my first computer was the ZX81. I am still amazed at what I could do with 1K ram, and that included the display. I still have the set of drawing instruments I bought when I was promoted to the drawing board 1n 1952, I still have my first erasing shield as well.
Michael.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
Michael,
This thread has evoked lots of memories....I too, have my drawing instruments (Dietzgen), including my original erasing shield.
It was amazing how efficient the first "microcomputer" programs had to be with RAM. I bought a TRS 80, Model IV in 1983....it had a credible word processing program that ran in 64k. An MS Word file with less than 5 pages will now use more than 64k.
I used Quick Basic in the early 80's to write quite a few applications programs for internal use. All of them were done under a 64k max. While not overly graphic, they did contain some screen graphics and print graphics. We had no choice but to write tight code to get the job done. Now the programmers don't care about conservation of RAM.
12" Post in green canvas book bag and 6" Picket Pocket (breast pocket of course).
My dad (also an engineer) bought me my first calculator for Xmas after I had started work. $135 TI with 1/x and x^2 as the only advanced functions. Used the Fourier series for sin and cos to get my trig functions; sin, cos, & tan.
Did a 12 story concrete frame bldg by the Portal Frame Method - and to the best of my knowledge, it is still standing without the benefit of 3D Pdelta computer analysis/design programs, 45 degree wind loads, and 45 degree wind loads with torsion. Go Figure!
The buildings were heavier back then because we generally only considered the primary load paths, the secondary and tertiary paths provided significant redundancy. The computer programs used those paths and skinnied the frames down. So now we deliberately build in redundancy.
Michael.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
"...students of traffic are beginning to realize the false economy of mechanically controlled traffic, and hand work by trained officers will again prevail." - Wm. Phelps Eno, ca. 1928
"I'm searching for the questions, so my answers will make sense." - Stephen Brust
JAE, I applied your 157 psf to the K6 English phone kiosk. I pro-rated the roof uplift to 85 psf.
At 25 sf the horizontal force would be 3925 lbs and the uplift on 9 sf would be 1020 lbs. The K6 weighs 1650 lbs so it wouldn't fly away, but it would go over with a bang.
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