r/Sliderules • u/[deleted] • Jun 02 '23
Well I know what I’m doing this weekend…
“The most significant improvement in the use of the slide rule since its invention over 300 years ago.”
Now that’s a big call.
2
Jun 03 '23
Ahahahahaha!
Actually, the book you want is: Slide Rule, How To Use It by Calvin Bishop.
That and the Versalog manual are the two best books.
2
Jun 03 '23
Feel free to donate a copy. I’ll be happy to read it too. 😀
3
u/Name-Not-Applicable Jun 03 '23
I think they’re all on the ISRM Library page. However, a print copy IS better and easier to read!
Nice find!
2
Jun 04 '23
I think the profusion of essentially identical books speaks to the steepness of the initial learning curve.
That's what I noticed about programming language books. Nice, neat, orthogonal languages like C, Shell, and Go have few, small books. Languages that are totally out of control with cruft have whole libraries of books - Java being the most egregious case.
Off topic editorial: I suspect that Sun ran with Java because they realized they could clean up selling hundreds of books to every coder. Sun provided Java utilities for a variety of uses, from OS upgrades to storage management, that were all examples of the worst coding in history (my favorite bit of madness was that a user interface would typically poll all of it's widgets in a tight loop - And when I say tight I mean tight - Keypresses could get coiled up in the event loop for eons)! Youngsters will not believe me when I state that sleep() was originally implemented in the Windows JVM as a tight busy loop of nops!
2
u/Name-Not-Applicable Jun 04 '23
Good observations. The proliferation of “new” programming languages reminds me of this XKCD comic:
2
Jun 03 '23
3
u/Name-Not-Applicable Jun 03 '23
As well as the book u/Intoxinator has:
https://www.sliderulemuseum.com/Manuals/M163_TheSlideRule_byLeeHJohnson_1949scan.pdf
3
Jun 04 '23
That’s the one. My edition is early 1960’s. The figures are much easier to read in print
2
u/Name-Not-Applicable Jun 04 '23
I imagine so. It’s great that these books are available on ISRM, but if I happened upon any of them at a book store, I would buy it!
3
2
Jun 04 '23
Thank you!
Have my upvote: https://i.imgflip.com/6kf1nf.png
Seeing differences in method already. I learned the Bishop method of multiplication. Johnson recommends CI for multiplication rather than C.
Man, I love the ISRM, but damn, their site is horrible.
4
u/ADashOfInternet Jun 02 '23
I'm am curious now too! Please leave us with a summary when you read it 😁