Remember when

Remember when your biggest worry was how big a tire you could fit without a lift?

 

I have a collection of different types of slide rules. Only one straight, but maybe 20 circular. All of the black ones react to black light. The two black ones at the top are 1943 & 1944. The white one with them was the one dad used flying B-52s when he retired. I have his 1st one with a 1942 date separate.

 

In flight over water, at night, on one engine and you want to know if you are past the Point Of No Return... damn right your life depends on a fast math solution!

 

Had to use a straight slide-rule in my Freshman year in college. (Won't say when that was, though...) Used the one my Dad used in college. Wouldn't know where to start with one now.

 

Awesome! Especially that you have some of your Dads.

 

Buying a bottle of whisky and a gold necklace and a silk jacket wasn't life or death, but they had the total and your change before you set the products on the counter - fast.

 

Used to have this one in my bachelor days....

 

Ok old fella!!

 

Did anyone have a top loading VCR? I think mine was slightly newer than this, but very similar.

 

Probably much more reliable (but less convenient) than front loaders due to the simpler mechanism.

 

Remember them, I still have them

 

Actually I think I stopped using it when it tried to eat Forest Gump half way through.

 

Remember this?

 

And they came in a can?

 

That’s a pretty impressive collection. Color me jealous.

I used to have a circular slide rule from the Edmund scientific company, but I don’t know whatever happened to it. I still have my dad’s bamboo K&E slide rule from when he was in engineering school in the 1940s.

I also have an aluminum 22 scale Picket dual-base power log rule, With the matching 6 inch pocket scale. Both of them came in very nice leather cases and I have them to this day.

I paid $50 for that set back when gasoline was $.26.

A Hewlett-Packard electronic calculator that did trigonometric functions was over $500 at the time. That’s probably about $3000 in today’s money.

 

I remember when they had dials instead of the 12 presets for stations. It was relegated to playback, or as the source when duping something.

 

The straight slide in the photo is bamboo, but is a Frederick Post, made in Japan.
I'm impressed to learn that your 22 scale Picket rule set was aluminum! I would have thought stainless steel. Wonder if your set is a true rarity? They weren't cheap when you bought them, that's for sure!

Electronic calculators were ridiculously expensive, as you pointed out. Especially considering you can do trig on the wind-side of an $8 circular slide-rule.