A Manual of the Slide Rule: Its History, Principle, and Operation

by J.E. Thompson

This manual of slide rule history and usage, as well as a detailed guide to its functions, includes typical use, problems, and settings. (Facsimile reprint edition of a book originally published in 1930.)

Genres: Science

230 pages, Paperback

Published January 27, 2021

About the author

James Edgar Thompson

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun book for anyone who likes using or playing with slide rules. It gives you the basics in a very straightforward manner and has a bunch of useful conversion tables that could be used with a slide rule. Most interesting to me was the history and types of slide rules covered.

Because it is aimed at a general slide rule audience, don't expect much on specialized slide rules, but it still taught me a couple of interesting tricks for using a slide rule's normal rules (it is mostly aimed at the Mannheim and slight variants layout).

Very interesting book for slide rule collectors or aficionados.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad often boasted that he could do arithmetic and percentages faster on a slide rule than with a calculator. I never actually saw him with a calculator but he certainly did a lot of his working out with a slide rule. It remained a mystery and it remained mysterious to me for many years. I looked at them and simply couldn’t work it out.
The book had me sorted quite quickly on the multiplication, division and percentages. I persisted and have become far more accomplished on slide rule trigonometry than I ever achieved as a schoolboy and than I will ever need work-wise. But its fun, and along with laying bricks its an activity I can enjoy with my father’s (rather critical) ghost.