charade #36 answer
My British Thornton AA010 Comprehensive slide rule. It is comprehensive - there are as many scales again on the back. This wasthe business back in about 1973. Then in about 1974 Hewlett-Packard launched the HP-35 and the world changed. My first calculator was a Sinclair Scientific - only accurate to 5 figures in the trig and log functions, but that's better than 3 figures from a slide rule. I replaced that with an HP-25 when I went up to university - that cost £90, which was a small fortune to me at the time. Then I had an HP-11C which lasted a long time, and then an HP-42S which I have had since 1989 and is still going strong; if the 42S won't do the job I need a computer. Since then Excel, MatLab and Mathematica on the PC have changed the world yet again...
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rickpawl (74 months ago | reply)
My dad is a retired math teacher and he used to say that "Anybody who can't use a sliderule shouldn't be allowed to vote!"
It's amazing to believe that these things put the first men into space.
ndrwfgg (74 months ago | reply)
LOL! I have some sympathy with your Dad!
Also amazing to believe that the "computer" that landed the LEM had less grunt than my HP-42S... But the world has got too timid to do the likes of that any more.
rickpawl (73 months ago | reply)
I know and it's a damn shame. When I was eight years old I would get up so early on the day of a launch (we lived in Wyoming then) and huddle by the heater vent in the livingroom to watch the countdowns during the Mercury/Redstone days. The countdown would take hours with many "holds" for one thing or another and sometimes the launch was scrubbed in the end after all that waiting. I remember many sonic booms over the Wyoming prairies back then too. X-15 and X-20 flights no doubt. : )
ndrwfgg (73 months ago | reply)
Rick - **envy** They did so much cool stuff in those days. I spent my schooldays up in West Cumbria (extreme NW England, miles from b****y anywhere, go look for Workington) so didn't get to see or hear anything like that. I wished we lived in Gloucestershire near Fairford where they did most of the Concorde test flying... I had to nag my parents to death to let me stay up to watch Apollo 11 land - it was at something like 2 in the morning UK time and I was 11. No VCRs then so it was watch it or miss it!
rickpawl (73 months ago | reply)
Oh man, the Concorde. I never got to see it and now I never will. : (
When A-11 landed I was up to my elbows in dishwater. I worked at a restraunt. But they had rigged up a tv in the dining area and so I along with all the cooks, busboys, waitresses, manager, etc stood out there, I with my soapy hands, and watched the landing. The whole restraunt came to a stop for 20 minutes. : )
ndrwfgg (73 months ago | reply)
Rick
I never quite managed to wangle a flight in one - but I have seen several at airshows, at Heathrow, flying out over where my mother-in-law used to live (west of London), and visited #001 (now permanently grounded on display at Duxford, near here) several times. A beautiful, beautiful aeroplane and a technological marvel, especially considering when it was designed. Like Apollo, the Harrier and the B747, an inspiring example of what we can do if we but make up our minds...
Yay! I'm glad you got to see A-11 land too - once in a lifetime!
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