5 Mar
2013
5 Mar
'13
2:30 p.m.
On 3 March 2013 19:41, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
1984 here. Never used a slide rule in anger at school, although I did
know how to use one. My father showed me the basics and I figured out
some other tricks.
I graduated from high school in 1987. Nobody had ever heard of a
slide rule by that time. They seem to have faded very quickly.
'85 here. Never ever saw one in any educational/scientific context.
Knew a few older scientists & engineers who kept one around for
sentimental value. Like the currency pounds, shillings and pence, or the
units of ounces,
pounds, hundredweights, furlongs, leagues, degrees Fahrenheit and so
on, they were all gone before my time. I entered school in about 1971.
I do find I ahve to be able to work in imperial units. American computer
equipment is full of imperial-sized UNC screws, IC pins are on a 0.1"
pitch (2.5mm is not close enough), and so on.
To this day, I have no clue how many "oz" in
a "lb" or "lb" in a
16 and 14 respectively.
stone, or yards in a mile, or any of that stuff. All
alien to me:
1760, a number whcih I can easily remeebr from anotehr context [1]
[1] And yes it is related to classic computers. What is it?
weird, incomprehensible, confusing and a little scary.
Actually, for practicla purposes 10 is a very inconvenient base for a
measuremtn sytem becuase it has so few factors.
And the conversion of in to cm (2.54cm in an inch) is plain painful. 2.55
or 2.56 would make my life a lot easier.
human numbers. I mean, who would want a scale from 0
for freezing to
100 for boiling? That's just crazy talk!
Not me!. Assuming you mean pure water at normal atmospheric pressure I'll
ahve 273.15 for freezign and 373.15 for boiling.
-tony