On 4/30/14 7:02 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
Sterling? Snort. K&E was the way to go.
Absolutely, snort. I still have my K&E (Keuffel & Esser Co. N.Y.); made of wood... (when ships were wood, and men were steel, and sheep ran scared) ... to get to the S L T scales I have to pull the slide out (turn it over) and reinsert it. You're right, the CF and DF scales are missing, but the A B scales have the π symbol where it should be (more or less). Mine is the 4058 C model, and you're right... has maths equivalents and conversions printed on the back...
I've misplaced the Sterling, but I'm fairly sure it was a deci-trig log-log model.
My high school '74 was the last class to learn the slide-rule using the Sterling (we paid a deposit to use the school's). I returned my Sterling to the teacher at year-end and got my deposit back. They are all probably in an old card-board box in the basement. I should ask.
In the last 15-20 years I've added NIB versions of Faber-Castell 1/54 Darmstadt, Pickett N-803-ES Dual-Base Log-Log, Pickett Cleveland Institute of Electronics N-515-T, and a pair of Sama&Etani/Concise circular pocket rules (models 200 and 600).
I received my Pickett Model N4-T Vector-Type Log Log Dual-Base Speed Rule as a graduation | birthday gift... off to college with a leather cased slip stick hanging from my belt (I was invincable). Mine had the CF/m DF/m scales also -- folded at 2.3, the loge of 10 with π where it should be (more or less). Copyright 1959... that baby was the king of slide rules... I pull it out from time to time, just for warm feelings.
Heh... I wonder if the VEs would have noticed the CIE rule had lots of electronics formulas on the back, if I'd taken it to the exam session where I passed both General and Amateur Extra tests. I couldn't take a calculator -- all of mine were programmable. But the slide-rule I took was just about as perplexing to the VEs.
I carried my slide rule to my general class exam as well. The VE inspected it to be sure that certain stuff was not written in pencil between the scales! True story. Its not required today, of course, but I can still send/receive at 20 wpm. <sigh>
marcus W0MHH '73 -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list