Project Gutenberg's Instruction for Using a Slide Rule, by W. Stanley

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Instruction for Using a Slide Rule

Author: W. Stanley

Release Date: December 29, 2006 [EBook #20214]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSTRUCTION FOR USING A SLIDE RULE ***

Produced by Don Kostuch

[Transcriber's Notes]

Conventional mathematical notation requires specialized fonts and
typesetting conventions. I have adopted modern computer programming
notation using only ASCII characters. The square root of 9 is thus
rendered as square_root(9) and the square of 9 is square(9).
10 divided by 5 is (10/5) and 10 multiplied by 5 is (10 * 5 ).

The DOC file and TXT files otherwise closely approximate the original
text. There are two versions of the HTML files, one closely
approximating the original, and a second with images of the slide rule
settings for each example.

By the time I finished engineering school in 1963, the slide rule was a
well worn tool of my trade. I did not use an electronic calculator for
another ten years. Consider that my predecessors had little else to
use--think Boulder Dam (with all its electrical, mechanical and
construction calculations).

Rather than dealing with elaborate rules for positioning the decimal
point, I was taught to first "scale" the factors and deal with the
decimal position separately. For example:

1230 * .000093 =
1.23E3 * 9.3E-5
1.23E3 means multiply 1.23 by 10 to the power 3.
9.3E-5 means multiply 9.3 by 0.1 to the power 5 or 10 to the power -5.
The computation is thus
1.23 * 9.3 * 1E3 * 1E-5
The exponents are simply added.
1.23 * 9.3 * 1E-2 =
11.4 * 1E-2 =
.114

When taking roots, divide the exponent by the root.
The square root of 1E6 is 1E3
The cube root of 1E12 is 1E4.

When taking powers, multiply the exponent by the power.
The cube of 1E5 is 1E15.

[End Transcriber's Notes]

INSTRUCTIONS
for using a
SLIDE
RULE
SAVE TIME!
DO THE FOLLOWING INSTANTLY WITHOUT PAPER AND PENCIL
MULTIPLICATION
DIVISION
RECIPROCAL VALUES
SQUARES & CUBES
EXTRACTION OF SQUARE ROOT
EXTRACTION OF CUBE ROOT
DIAMETER OR AREA OF CIRCLE

[Illustration: Two im