RadioBanter - View Single Post

October 29th 03, 06:29 AM

In article ,
(Hans K0HB) writes:

Then, as the giant asteroid was to dinosaurs, overnight the $9.95
pocket calculator killed the slide rule. Despite it's ubiquity and
utter simplicity the mighty slide rule went extinct in less than a
decade! Perhaps somewhere, in a backward company in a backward
country
without sand from which to make silicon chips, a group of stalwart
engineers still treasure their Pickett or K+E slipsticks, and still
require a practical examination, down to the third significant digit,
of an engineers proficiency, and whether they actually could explain
the difference between the CIF and DIF scales.

Perhaps some amateur mathematicians still are proficient on slide
rules
(after all, they haven't been outlawed!). I bet they even hold speed
and
accuracy contests at a nostalgic "Slippers" convention each spring in
Akron, Ohio. Led by the scratchy but firm voices of their oldest club
members, Jim 'Bentupcursor' Nichols and Larry Elscale, they close each
convention by quoting the 1940's fight song of that bastion of
wood-assisted math, Cal Tech:

"E-to-the-x du dx, E-to-the-x dx,
Cotan secant tangent sine,
three point one four one five nine.
Square root, cube root, QED
Slipstick, slide rule, Hooray! CT!"

The next SLIPS newsletter duly reports the resolution of the IEEE BoD
to
gain legislation to include slide-rule competency testing as a
requisite
to all engineering degrees, except those seeking 2-year Stickless
Technician degrees. Regular Technicians will require 5CPM (Calculation
Per Minute) exams, BSEE will require 13CPM, and MSEE will require a
20CPM exam.

On another front, when I first became involved in amateur radio, Morse
code was the one absolutely necessary communications mode used by
every
ham. It was simple, uncomplicated, easy to use (after some period of
rather tedious practice) and delightfully low tech. It was the
communications mode-of-choice for over three generations.

Then, as the giant asteroid was to dinosaurs, overnight..........

:-)

Pity that the northeastern USA membership organization still
thinks it is the tyrannosaurus rex of radio when all it is is a little
lizard in an ancient back yard of morsemanship.

LHA.