You have that slide rule in the back of the closet. Maybe it was from your college days. Maybe it was your Dad’s. Honestly. Do you know how to use it? Really? All the scales? That’s what we thought.

The slide rule, sometimes called a slipstick, was a type of mechanical analog computer. It was and still is, used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as roots, ...

The protractor and the Bunsen burner. Playing the recorder in music class. Drawing arcs and circles with a compass in geometry. These tools of the education trade become part of our lives for a ...

Most people have heard of or seen slide rules, with older generations likely having used these devices in school and at their jobs. As purely analog computers these ingenious devices use precomputed ...