Slide Rules, Calculators and other fun stuff 1

[Skogsgurra]

Welcome to a new thread about old things.

The original Slide Rules Collecting thread is now 120+ posts and more than two years old. So it is time to close it and start a new one.

Collecting antique, old, and yesterday's calculating devices is a fascinating hobby. I have learnt about history, commerce, science history and lots of other things that I always find interesting. I have met nice people and - believe it or not - also held little speeches on the subject. Without being hit by rotten eggs and tomatoes!

Slide Rules are still my main interest. But there are also other interesting devices like mechanical calculators, old electronic calculators, drawing instruments, planimeters and what have you. It would be interseting to hear about those things as well.

Welcome!

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[Skogsgurra]

About gas analyzers. I guess that anyone working in places like steel works, mines, cokeries have used the Draeger with glass tubes. Are they still used?

And, came to think of a real old one, the Schwackhöfer Hygrometer. Anyone knows about that?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[unclesyd]

Yes Drager tubes are still used everyday. I was just out to a job site where Drager tubes were being used to detect NOX and CO during a repair job. The Drager tubes were a boon to checking vessels for entry in that you didn't have to use your nose for NH3 and NOX among others.

I forgot one very important use of the Orsat when I started to work in the chemical industry. It was used to check the atmosphere for vessel entries. It and and the MSA explosimeter were the tools clear a vessel for entry.

 

[BJC]

This may take a couple of times to get right.
The board is a K&E "Pretty Neat" and they were. Great for making sketches.
Even better was the "Size Matic". A mechanical calculator that would add and subtract feet, inches and fractions of inches ( to 1/16 inch).
The rolling rule is not unique or old, however it is the only thing I have made in Australia.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Hi BJC,

That Pretty Neat board. Is it made by Keuffel & Esser? The famous Slide Rule maker?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[BJC]

Opps!
It was late and when I did that and was concentrating on getting the photo on the site. IT's not K&E it's Dietzgen. Eugene Dietzgen - the one who made slide rules among other things.
Here's all I can find on the web.

http://books.google.com/books?id=1W...ts=v7GDF0YBnV&sig=p8t_jXcAcYtg24lA4rpZsAuEBqk

The website is very interesting. I am going to spend some time there.
These were made in several sizesI ahve the the 379B 8-1/2 x 11 and the 379H 11x 17.
They were bought 40 years ago. I have ordered some for a job about 10 or 15 years ago. I wouldn't be supprized if there not still meing mad somewhere.

 

[rmw]

Speaking of calculators, what about the old electric rotary monsters? There was one in the engineering drawing lab when I was a freshman in College and we got to dinking around with it and divided by zero and it wouldn't stop. We tried and tried and tried to get it to stop. If we unplugged it, when we plugged it back in it started up again; just a chugging along. We were afraid to fess up to the professor what we had done so we hid it in a closet, with it just grinding away. Every day we checked on it and it was still running. After 4 days, we gave up and went and found the Prof. He laughed and laughed and just hit the "div stop" key and it quit. Fortunately he thought it funnier than serious and we didn't get in trouble.

About the time I graduated and went to work, in my second job I worked in an engineering department. The company wouldn't buy us an electronic calculator. I bought myself a HP 45 or 55 (10 step programmable) I can't remember but what I do remember is that it cost a month's salary and wouldn't fit in my pocket. But I bought it out of my personal funds. My manager had a TI of some kind that he too, bought with his personal funds. On crunch days when we had some real important project to get out I would just bring my slide rule to work and leave the calculator home. He hated it but what could he say. I kept telling him to reimburse me for the calculator and I'd bring it in every day.

The company had a surplus equipment sale and I had had some experience in successfully bidding on surplus military equipment so I decided to try my skills and put in a bid on an old electric rotary calculator. I won the bid and took the thing to my office and cranked it up. Immediately engineers from neighboring offices (they weren't cubes in those days, but the walls didn't go all the way to the ceiling either) came pouring in and began to lament that the previous occupant of my space had driven them nuts with an electric rotary calculator and they even identified the one that I had bid on and won as his old machine by a chipped key on the front of it. They were sick about it's return to the department. I only tortured them with it for a couple of days before I quit using it. I think if I searched in some storage sheds or the attic, I could find it.

rmw

 

[KENAT]

rmw, Star just for making me chuckle. I love the idea of not bringing in your calculator, way to stick it to the man, what effect did it have on your career prospects at that place though?

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[Skogsgurra]

Electro-mechanic (or mechano-electric?) calculators seem to fascinate even today. My grandchild Edwin (5 years) found an old, I mean OLD, Dalton, Cincinnati electric adding machine that I planned to restore when i get the time for it (there are a few things with higher priority). Being a good grandfather, I explained the functioning of it, plugged it in and left Edwin exploring. He very quickly managed to have it in never-end mode and I could hear it working for a while. Then I heard him crying out loud. It must have been worse than a horror movie for him. The machine had started screaming and thick smoke came out of it. I hope that it doesn't make him afraid of math - there are many reasons for that, I have been told.

One good thing is that I have one less item on my "to-do" list.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[IRstuff]

I've got a bunch of old stuff that I'm claiming are of historical value:

Daisy-wheel printer
Original Osborne 1
9-track computer tape
8-in floppy disk (unfortunately, I never had the drive itself)

Oddly, dot-matrix printers are still present. My doctor's office uses a bunch of Okidata dot-matrix printers to print multi-part forms.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[unclesyd]

For Skogsgurra and other electronic enthusiast here is a portal to a Web Ring that might be of some interest.

http://octopus.freeyellow.com/indexsmp.html

 

[msquared48]

In that I remember and still use 90% of whsat has been mentioned above, you guys make me feel ooooooold.

No one mentioned "Presstype" though...

And how about a "Planimeter".

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[unclesyd]

I haven't run into the "Presstype" but have done a lot of work around a machine call the "Varytype".

All our older Engineering Standards, Process Data Sheets and any other document that required multiple fonts and sizes were composed on the Varytype.

Our original one was same as the top picture with the wide carriage.

http://staff.xu.edu/~polt/typewriters/varityper.html

We had just purchased this one when IBM came out with the composer. These were soon overtaken by the larger computers and then the PC.

http://www.textfiles.com/digitize/items/1980-varityper-

brochure/

As stated previously have spent many hours using the planimeter to tantalize flow on circular charts used on Republic Instrument's Flow Meters.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Thanks unclesyd!

That Varityper is news to me. Very interesting. Want one!

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...

 

[drawoh]

Skogsgurra,

Here is a sliderule for your collection...

http://www.engcom.net/index.php?option=com_sliderule&Itemid=73#

JHG

 

[Skogsgurra]

Thanks a lot!

But, there is a rather big error in the calculations with this device. If you align A and B index (C and D are of course also aligned, no problem there) and then read the 10 on A and B scales, you will see that 1x10 = 9.99. That is a 1 % error and that is not typical at all for even the crudest slide rule.

I see no reason why this is so. Is it emphasize that slide rules are analog devices and hence not to be trusted? Or is it my computer that errs?

Anyhow. It is an otherwise beautifully made model. Smooth operation and nice colours.

But, why the error?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...