What is a slide ruler?

Question

One of my grandfathers saw me doing my homework before and said that he used to use a slide ruler. Before I could ask him for more details he had to leave because my grandma was calling him to go to their car. It has to do with math I think because I was working a math problem when he made the comment.

Answer 1

it is a mechanical ruler-like device with parts that slide against each other that is used to make calculations. You could use it to multiply, divide find logaithms, trigonometric functions and other things. They were used before cheap calculators were available. I last had to use one in 1976 when I was a freshman in college.

Answer 2

The slide rule (often nicknamed a "slipstick"[1]) is a mechanical analog computer, consisting of at least two finely divided scales (rules), most often a fixed outer pair and a movable inner one, with a sliding window called the cursor. The slide rule was used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for "scientific" functions such as roots, logs and trig, but does not perform addition or subtraction.

Before the advent of the pocket calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering. The use of slide rules continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s even as digital computing devices were being gradually introduced; but in the early 1970s the electronic scientific calculator made it largely obsolete and most suppliers exited the business.

Despite their similar appearance, a slide rule serves a purpose different from that of a standard ruler: a ruler measures physical distances and aids in drawing straight lines, while a slide rule performs mathematical operations by using distances on nonlinearly-divided scales.

Answer 3

A slide rule was an early calculator. It was made of plastic and had three lines of numbers you could line up by sliding the middle plastic strip under another piece of plastic that would tell the answer. It was used in higher math since it could do squares, square roots, cubes, cube roots, and trig stuff

Answer 4

it's called a slide rule. It is a ruler with a center section that slides back and forth. It can be used to multiply, divide, calculate roots, and some trig functions like logs. Basically it was a primitive calculator.

Answer 5

LOL An old device used to calculate math problems. They are getting high prices as vintage office items. If your grandpa could find one you might get a book or two with the money. They became obsolete with the advent of the calculator.

Answer 6

before the PC we used a slide-ruler,
a rather simple ruler with a sliding part to "measure"
multiplications.
19X19 would give something like about 400 (the answer is 399).

Answer 7

I remember seeing one of these things when I was a child. It was what was used before hand held calculators.
I was a piece of wood that had a bunch of numbers and lines on it that slid between another piece of wood with a bunch of numbers between them.
I was told it was only accurate to three digits and you had to find the power it was to be raised to.
Check out the sources listed below for an illustration.