Let’s take a moment of silence for the slide rule industry. A moment to reflect on those elegant wooden and metal devices that once adorned the breast pockets of engineers everywhere – now relegated to museum displays and nostalgic eBay listings.
But wait – do you even know what a slide rule is? Or are you among the digital natives who’ve never experienced the tactile joy of sliding those logarithmic scales into perfect alignment? If you’re under 50, there’s a good chance you’ve never actually held one of these magnificent calculating devices.
The Rise Before the Fall
The slide rule wasn’t always destined for the technological graveyard. For nearly 400 years, it reigned supreme as the pocket calculator of choice. Think about that – four centuries of logarithmic dominance! From the 1600s when William Oughtred first arranged two logarithmic scales side by side, to the 1970s when electronic calculators delivered the final blow.
These mathematical marvels helped design the Brooklyn Bridge, calculated trajectories for World War II artillery, and even accompanied the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Yes, slide rules literally helped humans reach the lunar surface! Can your smartphone claim such an illustrious legacy? (Well, yes, actually it can do far more – but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here.)
The Signs of Impending Doom
So what killed this thriving industry? Let’s analyze the crime scene.
Exhibit A: The first handheld electronic calculator, the Sharp QT-8D, arrived in 1969. Sure, it cost $495 (about $3,900 in today’s money) and could only handle four basic operations, but the writing was on the wall – or rather, on the tiny digital display.
Exhibit B: Texas Instruments released the TI-2500 “Datamath” calculator in 1972, bringing the price down to $149.95. Still expensive, but heading in an ominous direction for slide rule manufacturers.
Exhibit C: By 1975, you could get a scientific calculator for under $50. Game over.
Can you imagine being a slide rule executive during this period?
“No, no, these electronic calculators are just a fad. People will always prefer the elegant simplicity of our products!”
“Who would trust a machine to do their calculations? What happens when the batteries die? A slide rule never needs batteries!”
“We just need to pivot – maybe slide rules with built-in digital watches? Hello? Is anyone listening?”
The Great Slide Rule Factory Massacre
In a remarkably short span – about five years – an entire industry collapsed. Keuffel & Esser, a company that had been making slide rules since 1891, shut down production in 1975. Pickett, Post, Dietzgen, and all the other manufacturers quickly followed suit.
Think about the specialized workers – the scale engravers, the cursor designers, the mahogany selectors. Entire skill sets became obsolete overnight. Did they form support groups? Was there a “Former Slide Rule Craftsmen Anonymous” meeting every Thursday night at the local community center?
“Hi, my name is Bob, and I used to calibrate logarithmic scales.”
“Hi, Bob!”
The Legacy: Nerdy Collectors and Museum Pieces
But here’s the thing about obsolescence – it eventually becomes nostalgic, then collectable, then valuable again (though in a completely different context).
Today, vintage slide rules command impressive prices on auction sites. The very instruments that engineers couldn’t give away in 1976 now sell for hundreds – sometimes thousands – of dollars to collectors. So maybe the slide rule executives should have just warehoused their inventory for 40 years?
And what about the cultural impact? The slide rule was the original nerd accessory – the pocket protector of calculation. Before “tech bros” carried MacBooks, engineers proudly displayed their slide rules. It was a visible symbol that said, “I can perform complex mathematical operations using logarithmic scales, and you can’t.”
What Can We Learn?
The slide rule industry teaches us something profound about technological disruption – it’s merciless, often quick, and rarely anticipated by those most affected. And yet, is this anything new? The history of human progress is littered with the corpses of once-thriving industries:
- The lamplighters who maintained gas street lamps
- The ice delivery men who kept iceboxes cold
- The switchboard operators connecting telephone calls
- The typewriter manufacturers and repair shops
And so it goes. One generation’s essential technology becomes another’s curiosity. What modern tools are we using today that our grandchildren will view with the same bemused fascination we reserve for slide rules?
But perhaps the most interesting question is this: What crucial skills and knowledge were lost in the transition? The slide rule required its users to have an intuitive understanding of logarithms and mental approximation. You needed to know the rough magnitude of your answer to place the decimal point correctly. Modern calculators remove that necessity – for better or worse.
So let’s pour one out for the slide rule industry – a victim of progress, a casualty of convenience, a martyr to modernity. Its logarithmic scales may have slid into obsolescence, but its place in the history of human calculation remains, well, incalculable.
Have you ever used a slide rule? Or do you have another beloved technology that’s now extinct? Share your analog nostalgia in the comments below!