Wait a sec....I've got to check the sundial in the yard to see what time it is. Damn! It's cloudy ; > )

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I had a nice slide rule in college but, prior to my graduation in 1967, it got stolen. I have a simpler one at my side right now, a Frederick Post. Most are 25-cm ones. I've seen a 40-cm one and a circular one, prior to 1967. One could still use one; for example, to find fractions of integers that are close to a certain desired ratio. Then he/she could use the calculator to find the discrepancy.

I had (have - but can't lay my hands on it at the moment to check the model) a Pickett, too. The foul green/yellow colour was "scientifically proven" to be less stressful on the eyes. Came complete with a leather carrying case which was supposed to be cleaned with saddle soap and the salesman must have known his job on my parents as I still have most of a tin of the stuff that I have never found another use for.

Another variant was a cylindrical one with the scale in a spiral round the cylinder so you could have a longer scale for more accuracy.

F.

I'm going back here and relying on memory, so unfortunately the details have been lost to time.

Back then, in addition to a pee-cee, I also had Tandy TRS-80 Color Computers (Coco's). I got more enjoyment out of the Coco's. They were simple and fun to use, relatively easy to integrate into the "real world" through their A/D converters (joystick ports), could be run under a UNIX-like RTOS called OS-9 by Microware, and had a relatively large community following. Like the Atari and Commodore 8-biters, they were a hobbyist's machine.

The Coco's also had a following with the Ham radio community as well. Among many other things, they were used as TTY terminals for packet radio. That, in itself, isn't surprising.

However, I remember reading something at the time that I found very interesting. It is as interesting today as well. I don't remember if I read it in a magazine or online somewhere, but I do remember reading about how NWS (or it may have been NOAA) "storm chasers" were using Coco's as mobile terminals. The interesting part was that they using *TCP/IP* and were a bona fide internet node! They had built, basically, a "black box" which handled the TCP/IP packets to and from their HF radios and translated them into serial data that the computer could handle. Since all the 8-biters at this time had either a DB-9 serial or RS-232 port, this "black box" could turn any of the 8-biters (Coco, Commodore, Atari) into an "internet node".

(In 1987, the way I was accessing the internet was through serial dialup to a local VAX/VMS .edu machine, using just a terminal emulator. PPP, or even SLIP, didn't exist yet. Actually having your own IP address, at home, was a pipe dream!)

LOL...

Yep, the era of stone knives and bearskins. ;-)

And if you tried to tell most people what is was you were trying to do with that collection of gear, they looked at you like you had three heads. :-)

Alinator

"And if you tried to tell most people what is was you were trying to do with that collection of gear, they looked at you like you had three heads. :-)"
Alinator, people still look at me that way when they see the dining room full of computers.

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Came complete with a leather carrying case which was supposed to be cleaned with saddle soap and the salesman must have known his job on my parents as I still have most of a tin of the stuff that I have never found another use for.

It is great for cleaning and waterproofing leather shoes and boots (and anything else leather for that matter).

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BOINC WIKI

Came complete with a leather carrying case which was supposed to be cleaned with saddle soap and the salesman must have known his job on my parents as I still have most of a tin of the stuff that I have never found another use for.

It is great for cleaning and waterproofing leather shoes and boots (and anything else leather for that matter).

Ah!! A man who's into leather!!! ;)

A regular dose of neatsfoot oil has always kept my climbing boots perfectly waterproof. For shoes it's regular shoe polish and I don't have too much else that's leather. Hence the longevity of the tin of saddle soap.

F.

Came complete with a leather carrying case which was supposed to be cleaned with saddle soap and the salesman must have known his job on my parents as I still have most of a tin of the stuff that I have never found another use for.

It is great for cleaning and waterproofing leather shoes and boots (and anything else leather for that matter).

Ah!! A man who's into leather!!! ;)

A regular dose of neatsfoot oil has always kept my climbing boots perfectly waterproof. For shoes it's regular shoe polish and I don't have too much else that's leather. Hence the longevity of the tin of saddle soap.

F.

I didn't say anything about going through the stuff very fast. My tin is about half gone, and I bought about 3 decades ago.

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BOINC WIKI

Dubbin, dudes! you need a tin of good ol' Dubbin Wax for your leather apparel.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Dubbin, dudes! you need a tin of good ol' Dubbin Wax for your leather apparel.

Ah but with the oil you can pour it inside the boots as well as apply it to the outside so you waterproof the seams from both sides (though it does make the socks difficult to wash!)

F.

Fred and Gecko, I don't think sundials are accurate year-round unless they're made specially as, for example, from templates available at certain websites. The Sun doesn't transit at the same time each day because of the ovality of Earths orbit. One would have to change the numerals twice a year to provide for time changes. Also a sundial accurate at position x would never be right at position y. Here for example, solar noon is at (average) 1:43 PM EDT. It would be interesting to see a spiral sliderule. I bet it would be awkward to use, though.

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ovality? I'm sure you mean ellipticalitudiness :P I may also accept ovallitudinality :D

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Fred and Gecko, I don't think sundials are accurate year-round unless they're made specially as, for example, from templates available at certain websites. The Sun doesn't transit at the same time each day because of the ovality of Earths orbit. One would have to change the numerals twice a year to provide for time changes. Also a sundial accurate at position x would never be right at position y. Here for example, solar noon is at (average) 1:43 PM EDT. It would be interesting to see a spiral sliderule. I bet it would be awkward to use, though.

For the cylindrical slide rule see here. They weren't as quick as the conventional models but far more accurate.

F.

I was on a project to replace the manual Army Supply System with a computerised system in Australia. The only computer we had at the start of the project had those big 7 1/2 inch floppy drives and we had the latest in Dbase software. Dbase, not Dbase 1 or 2 or 3 just Dbase. By the end of the project we had hundreds of computers and we even had a form of distributed computing for ou warehousing solution. I have been working in that field ever since and I am still amased at he power of desktops compared to the past.

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Proud Founder and member of



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Interesting about the spiral sliderule. Maybe it was detented so it could click its way down the cylinder and thus be moved faster. I used log tables for more accurate calculations but that was kinda slow, too. I saw "ovality" and "ovalness" in the dictionary and thought that would be more practical than "ellipticity" which sounds too scientific and might label me as an "eccentric". But on these forums the last word might be OK and more accurate. I guess none of them would be very good at a girls fashion show.

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Question is does anyone here use or have used an abacus? ;)

Yes, a Japanese one with about sixteen columns, and a smaller Chinese one. Just to play with, though: I’m nowhere near fast enough on them for any practical purpose. I did keep one beside my computer at work for a while; I’d tell people it was my backup system.

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The Japanese still train schoolchildren in The Abacus, I've never seen such nimble fingers.

Edit....Or such nimble minds.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Question is does anyone here use or have used an abacus? ;)

Yes, a Japanese one with about sixteen columns, and a smaller Chinese one. Just to play with, though: I’m nowhere near fast enough on them for any practical purpose. I did keep one beside my computer at work for a while; I’d tell people it was my backup system.

Hmmmm. I had a shiney Brass one a long time ago (about 2 1/2" x 3")...don't know where it went. Maybe I'll look for it.

And I own one of these Nixie clocks which I have set to UTC to compare with Seti event times.
Complete with real Russian nixie tubes. I think they are soooooo sexy.

Quick! Get one for each of the kitties!

Place one of those fine babies on 'yer desktop fer free: Nixie Clock

Mmmmm... Tubes!

I emailed the author of the Nixie Clock software some time ago asking about being able to add an offset so it could display UTC, but never got a reply.
However....
Today I found this nifty Desktop add-on clock which is absolutely what I have been looking for! You can set it to display UTC and drag it anywhere on your desktop, even in the taskbar. Great for reference to Seti timestamps.
Not as nifty as a nixie, but a very handy add-on!

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."