Generation Gap Illustrated

Not too long ago the three kids from next door were visiting our house, and they came into the computer room. One of them spied my bookshelf on which resides my rather extensive collection of LPs. With wide-eyed innocence and in all seriousness she turned to me and asked...





"What are all those really skinny books?"

Now that's funny.

Oh yeah. Makes you wonder if it's you or your bike that's creaking, right?

Thats funny. BTW we still have a console stereo/radio in our family room. I too had quite a few LPs. My youngest son is an IT adminsitrator, and has almost every latter day electronic toy. How ever one day when we were going to play a record in question, he had no idea how to use it.

Also I went thru electronics in the Navy 50 years ago, and still have my slide rules. I keep a small one in the truck to compute gas mileage. All 3 of my sons are amazed that my slip sticks can figure out math, and they dont even need battries.

I might add I tell my sons almost all the advancements we have and use today were engineered on slide rules. The A-bomb. lasers, moon rockets and jet planes were all engineered with slide rules.

I showed my son a picture of the 7-foot Pickett Slide Rule we had in my high school math class. (My junior year math instructor looked kinda like the guy in the picture, too. The Original Nerd.)

My son asked "Wow. What size batteries did it use?"

* sigh *

Blues

When my oldest son starte HS, the math and science room also had a huge 7 foot long slide rule hanging from the ceiling. Apparently some Co made those things and sold them to a lot of schools. Kinda wonder what ever happened to the thing.

rydabent - I know that Pickett and K+E made them. When I first started drafting for a living in 1970, we'd always get catalogs from Pickett and K+E that would list them.

You can actually buy standard size slide rules: The Slide Rule Universe.

Don't think you can buy the giant ones, though. Those are definitely collector's items.