This is accurate

[Stevegolf1]

People who can tune a carb are definitely more rare than those with PHDs, especially these days!

[Leif in Calif]

I have a lot of PhDs in my family...this Pyramid is upside down (except for the carburetor experts) .

Most PhDs see life through the soda straw of their very specialized education. When I was a kid we owned a small boat with another guy from my father's work. He was a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. He never could get the outboard to start... my father had to help him. 

[28 Chrysler]

And some do things like this,

[carbking]

Not so sure about intellect.

 

The tiny (and growing smaller) volume at the top is reflective of the fact that those of us in this category are mostly old geezers, that were born with good genes, took care of our bodies, and out-lived our contemporaries.

 

It would be an interesting picture to show at reunions except for the blank stares, and the question "What is a carburetor"?

 

You can probably group those that can change a phonograph needle in the same category!

 

Jon

[carbking]

On 10/26/2023 at 10:39 AM, Leif in Calif said:

I have a lot of PhDs in my family...this Pyramid is upside down (except for the carburetor experts) .

Most PhDs see life through the soda straw of their very specialized education. When I was a kid we owned a small boat with another guy from my father's work. He was a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. He never could get the outboard to start... my father had to help him. 

I had a relative that worked as an engineer for one of the major airplane manufacturers. He could look at a preliminary drawing and tell you if a plane could fly, but as a five-year-old, I had to help him with a Gilbert Erector set model.

 

Jon

[rocketraider]

1 hour ago, carbking said:

You can probably group those that can change a phonograph needle in the same category!

Even without an advanced degree I can change out a stylus; yea, even a complete cartridge. Provided I can find one, that is!

 

It's just as aggravating to find old phonograph and turntable parts as it is to find old car parts.

[pmhowe]

17 hours ago, carbking said:

You can probably group those that can change a phonograph needle in the same category!

... or clean, adjust (and use) a slide rule.

[JACK M]

7 hours ago, pmhowe said:

... or clean, adjust (and use) a slide rule.

Sore subject for me that slide rule thing.

Took the class three times and the light never did come on.

[Andy J]

When I was studying electronics in junior college many years ago,calculators were in their infancy and didn't do much.We used slide rules because they were faster and were accurate enough for the calculations we needed.

[ply33]

10 hours ago, pmhowe said:

... or clean, adjust (and use) a slide rule.

2 hours ago, JACK M said:

Sore subject for me that slide rule thing.

Took the class three times and the light never did come on.

I don’t recall taking a class in using a slide rule. In high school science class those of us who were nerdy got slide rules and figured out how to use them. In college it seems like it was just assumed you knew how to use one.

 

For what it is worth, I think I was in about the last graduating class from college where most of the engineering students used slide rules. The HP 35 came out while I was in college but they were so expensive that only the rich kids got them. The prices on engineering/scientific electronic calculators dropped fast enough that I think they became affordable by most students shortly after I graduated.

 

edit: Dredging up old memories. I do recall some drills in using a slide rule in high school. Not sure if it was in my advanced math class or in one of my physical science classes. So I guess I did have some lessons in using a slide rule but only as part of a class focused on other topics.

Edited November 22, 2023 by ply33 (see edit history)

[Jim Bollman]

I started using a slide rule in high school.  I think my Dad showed me how.  Got to college and one of the classes had a couple of introductory sessions on how to use a slide rule which I was allowed to skip. We had one math teacher that would pull out his 5" slide rule and put it almost on top of his coke bottle thick glasses and get a couple of digits more accurate than we got on a 10".  Took us awhile to realize he was the teacher and knew the answer and was just pulling one on us.

[Gary_Ash]

I was taught how to use a slide rule as a freshman in high school in 1957 at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a pre-engineering high school. It was beaten into me that slide rules were accurate to two significant figures, sometimes three, never more. The real trick was to know where to put the decimal point. My wise teacher George Kehm would ask, “ How much does an elephant weigh - 4 lbs, 40 lbs, 4000 lbs, 4 million pounds?”  We were always challenged to apply common sense to our calculations - uncommon. That’s still important even with computers!

[edinmass]

I always wanted to learn how to use a slide rule……..and now at my advanced age I can’t see it even if wearing my glasses. Maybe in my next go around…….🤔

[trimacar]

I was in college,LSU, 1969-1973.  Sliderules were the norm for us engineering students,then Texas Instruments came out with a simple calculator, but it was somewhere in the 300-400 range, a fortune to a college kid back then.  For reference, I was going to school on 300 a month, which included rent, gas, food, beer, and more beer.

[ply33]

1 hour ago, Gary_Ash said:

I was taught how to use a slide rule as a freshman in high school in 1957 at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a pre-engineering high school. It was beaten into me that slide rules were accurate to two significant figures, sometimes three, never more. The real trick was to know where to put the decimal point. My wise teacher George Kehm would ask, “ How much does an elephant weigh - 4 lbs, 40 lbs, 4000 lbs, 4 million pounds?”  We were always challenged to apply common sense to our calculations - uncommon. That’s still important even with computers!

Yep. A slide rule only does the mantissa, you had to keep track of the exponent in your head. That gave you a pretty good feel for if the result was believable. The generation(s) after ours using calculators and computers did not get that training reinforced on every calculation which could lead to problems where the result was wildly off due to calculation errors or erroneous inputs.

[edinmass]

18 hours ago, trimacar said:

I was in college,LSU, 1969-1973.  Sliderules were the norm for us engineering students,then Texas Instruments came out with a simple calculator, but it was somewhere in the 300-400 range, a fortune to a college kid back then.  For reference, I was going to school on 300 a month, which included rent, gas, food, beer, and more beer.

 

WOW! That's an incredible story........I had absolutely no idea beer had already been invented back when you were in college..............😎

[trimacar]

57 minutes ago, edinmass said:

 

WOW! That's an incredible story........I had absolutely no idea beer had already been invented back when you were in college..............😎

Yes Ed, we’d just graduated drinking mead out of dinosaur hoofs.  The old saying is that college is the fountain of knowledge where kids go to drink. Trust me, I did not let college interfere with my education!

[carbking]

Dad had an older Post slide rule from a home education course he took on GI Bill after WWII.

 

I taught myself to use it in grade school.

 

When I entered college, got laughed at for using the bamboo rule, as all th engineering students used metal Picketts. So I bought a 10 inch Pickett. Later, working for an electrical power company, I bought a 6 inch pocket rule. A few years later HP came out with the pocket calculator, and my boss at work ordered one, which I used at work.

 

Somewhere along the line, I purchased a Pickett circular rule.

 

Still have my original Post, as well as the three Picketts.

 

Used to win a beer now and again betting the calculater geeks that, if we only had 2 digit accuracy, I could beat their calculators using the slide rule. They didn't understand how most of the problem were problems with proportions

 

Jon

[28 Chrysler]

I still have my first $79 Calculator, the battery eater.

[Gary_Ash]

Some of us can tune a carburetor, have a PhD, and still own one or more slide rules.  I have slide rules that belonged to my wife's grandfather in England, my grandfather who was a surveyor for Pacific Coast Coal Company in Roslyn and Black Diamond, WA in the 1910-1930 period, my father who started engineering school at U. of Washington (but switched to social sciences), and one of my own from high school and college.

 

Left to right:  My K&E Log-Log Duplex Decitrig model (1957), my father's K&E model with fewer scales, my grandfather's K&E surveyor's slide rule (ca. 1915) used to calculate horizontal distance from the chain distance between two points (in rods) and the elevation angle of the transit looking at the second point.  The last one belonged to my wife's grandfather in England.  All are bamboo/wood.

 

Also, in the eras before electronic calculators, even back to the 1600s, people used books with tables of logarithms to the base 10.  To multiply A x B, you looked up the log of A and the log of B in the book, added the two logs together, then used the book in inverse to find the number represented by the summed logs.  The log tables could also be used to divide numbers and to find powers and roots.  It was slow, of course, but log tables with 7 or 10 decimal places produced excellent accuracy when handling large numbers, a feat not possible with a slide rule. My grandfather the surveyor had a book of log tables to 10 decimal places.  He used it for calculating the quantity of coal available in coal mines.  Of course, a slide rule uses scales laid out logarithmically to do its calculations. 

 

 A page from an old book of logarithms to seven decimal places.

 

 

[Tom Boehm]

This thread went off track long ago so I will ask this question. My dad was a draftsman in the 1960's. (linen paper and pencil). I don't recall him having a slide rule but he did have a "Smoleys book" that had tables like the one posted above. Does anyone know what that book was?

[Gary_Ash]

Smoley's Four Combined Tables For Engineers, Architects and Students (Smoley's Four Combined Tables: Logarithms and Squares, Slopes and Rises, Logarithmic Trigonometric Tables, Segmental Functions).  

 

You can buy a used copy or reprint online.

 

But, to the point made by @Tom Boehm, the OP referred to people who can't tune a carb.  I can tune these, four at a time (Stromberg EX-23).

[ply33]

2 hours ago, Tom Boehm said:

This thread went off track long ago so I will ask this question. My dad was a draftsman in the 1960's. (linen paper and pencil). I don't recall him having a slide rule but he did have a "Smoleys book" that had tables like the one posted above. Does anyone know what that book was?

When I was in school it seemed the CRC book was the one to get for all your math tables. CRC being short for Chemical Rubber Company if I recall correctly. Many pages looking pretty much the same as the image posted by Gary above. I disposed of my 1960s copy only a few years ago not having opened it since decent calculators and cheap computers came out in the 1980s.

[Hans1]

in the later 50's, a belt loop on a brown leather slip stick holder was a sign of future engineer..............

[Farmallregular]

On 11/25/2023 at 11:45 AM, Hans1 said:

in the later 50's, a belt loop on a brown leather slip stick holder was a sign of future engineer..............

That lasted into the early 70's...I started college in 1971, and how to use a slide rule was part of a required first quarter course for all engineering students.  I think I still have my copy of the CRC handbook of math tables.

[Hans1]

On 11/25/2023 at 1:45 PM, Hans1 said:

in the later 50's, a belt loop on a brown leather slip stick holder was a sign of future engineer..............

I forgot the plastic pocket protector to keep the white shirt clean !!

[Marty Roth]

On 11/21/2023 at 8:29 PM, edinmass said:

I always wanted to learn how to use a slide rule……..and now at my advanced age I can’t see it even if wearing my glasses. Maybe in my next go around…….🤔

 

On 11/21/2023 at 8:15 PM, Gary_Ash said:

I was taught how to use a slide rule as a freshman in high school in 1957 at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a pre-engineering high school. It was beaten into me that slide rules were accurate to two significant figures, sometimes three, never more. The real trick was to know where to put the decimal point. My wise teacher George Kehm would ask, “ How much does an elephant weigh - 4 lbs, 40 lbs, 4000 lbs, 4 million pounds?”  We were always challenged to apply common sense to our calculations - uncommon. That’s still important even with computers!

 

On 11/21/2023 at 8:57 PM, trimacar said:

I was in college,LSU, 1969-1973.  Sliderules were the norm for us engineering students,then Texas Instruments came out with a simple calculator, but it was somewhere in the 300-400 range, a fortune to a college kid back then.  For reference, I was going to school on 300 a month, which included rent, gas, food, beer, and more beer.

You youngsters  !!

I walked campus with my Post VersaLog hanging from my belt-

and wasn't even an Engineering Major ...

 

I don't know if my '58 Impala convertible and TR-3, or my Post impressed the young ladies more ?

[kings32]

I walk that school with M60 

[Gary_Ash]

Another slide rule, but a very old one:  We were in the History of Science Museum at the University of Oxford (England) today where I saw this slide rule made of wood, about 2 ft long.  It was labeled as a navigation slide rule from the late 18th century, making it about 250 years old. It was beautifully made. 

 

Nearby was a blackboard that Albert Einstein had written some lecture equations on in the 1930s. The writing was still there and legible. 

https://www.hsm.ox.ac.uk/blackboard-used-by-albert-einstein

 

The old slide rule. Note the screw adjustment on the left end for fine movements. 

Edited December 1, 2023 by Gary_Ash (see edit history)

[Larry Schramm]

I still have my Dad's K&E slide rule that he used in college in the 40's, I used in high school and college in the 60's & 70's.  Still works fine and no batteries needed.  

 

I even still use one to calculate fuel mileage in our '76 Corvette.  It has been there since we bought the car and I still use it.