The Better Slide Rule
Fall 2000
| Volume 16
| Issue 2
THE SPRING 2000 ARTICLE ABOUT calculators (“How the Computer Got Into Your Pocket,” by Mike May) shook loose a memory for me. In 1974 my high school precalculus teacher recommended that we buy slide rules to aid our calculations. Almost all of us ordered and awaited delivery of the mysterious devices. The big day arrived and I expected we’d spend the hour learning the rudiments of our enigmatic new tools. Instead, we crowded around the teacher’s desk to ooh and ahh over his new Texas Instruments SR-50 calculator—his reward for meeting a slide-rule sales quota.
Jerome Elisha
Covington, Wash.
