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Gone out of fashion

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Vivienne14 said:
I disliked maths but loved to look at and ‘play’ with my dad’s slide rule. He showed me how to use it but I doubt I’d remember the first thing about them now.

Viv.
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I had no idea of what a slide rule was. Never heard of one till this topic came up on bhf. At school we only had a slate & a nail to scribble answers, then after a while someone invented chalk. Seriously though, i remember logarithms classes simply because that particular teacher was easily distracted by asking him about his time with the Gurkhas or learning Christmas song in German.
 
Had my slide rule, used at Handsworth Tech. in 1944/45, until few weeks ago. Read of a nine year old lad in Torquay building his own Museum, so sent him that, with a number of other things, that were like me, old and ancient. Suggested he gets his friends and family to guess what they all were. Didn't have instructions with it but number of videos on Youtube
 
Eric Gibson said:
The most we got (Left in 1950) was HCFs and LCMs we did a cursory bit of logarithms but it's all forgotten.
Still got a slide rule in my drawer but can't remember when it last came out although I have had cause to use my Vernier gauge on some of the modern car stuff.
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Eric, I just wonder how many young people know how to use a vernier gage? I remember seeing my first clock gage (sorry to be off topic)!
 
rosie said:
My brother and father used a micrometer in their working lives, are they still used? I had enough trouble with an ordinary rule, Dad tried to teach me about the slide rule but I couldn't do it!
rosie.
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As an owner of an "engineering" business until my retirement 5 years ago, I had every conceivable piece of measuring equipment. Micrometers and Vernier calipers are mostly digital now and not a lot of learning is required to use them. I had a slide rule too, however, it was just a subject of curiosity.
Dave A
 
rosie said:
My brother and father used a micrometer in their working lives, are they still used? I had enough trouble with an ordinary rule, Dad tried to teach me about the slide rule but I couldn't do it!
rosie.
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I was taught to use a micrometer, the first lesson was how to hold it properly so that it could be screwed down onto the piece being measured ‘just right’. The micrometer is held and adjusted in one hand, and the sample in the other. I am left handed, but it was easier to learn it right handed in this case. Not sure if there is a leftie micrometer.
Andrew.
 
adap2it said:
As an owner of an "engineering" business until my retirement 5 years ago, I had every conceivable piece of measuring equipment. Micrometers and Vernier calipers are mostly digital now and not a lot of learning is required to use them. I had a slide rule too, however, it was just a subject of curiosity.
Dave A
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Someone bought me a vernier caliper a good while ago. They thought I might find it useful. It was made of white plastic with the markings hot stamped in black. I wouldn’t trust the primary calibration, the vernier was probably decorative. ‘It is the thought that counts’ came to mind.
I have a couple of the cheap digital ones, and I was surprised how consistent they were when measuring the ‘inside’ fingers of one with the ‘outside’ fingers of the other.
Andrew.
 
Brummie a long time ago said:
I was taught to use a micrometer, the first lesson was how to hold it properly so that it could be screwed down onto the piece being measured ‘just right’. The micrometer is held and adjusted in one hand, and the sample in the other. I am left handed, but it was easier to learn it right handed in this case. Not sure if there is a leftie micrometer.
Andrew.
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Andrew, I am left handed and just turned it over once the adjuster started to slip!
 
Brummie a long time ago said:
Someone bought me a vernier caliper a good while ago. They thought I might find it useful. It was made of white plastic with the markings hot stamped in black. I wouldn’t trust the primary calibration, the vernier was probably decorative. ‘It is the thought that counts’ came to mind.
I have a couple of the cheap digital ones, and I was surprised how consistent they were when measuring the ‘inside’ fingers of one with the ‘outside’ fingers of the other.
Andrew.
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My first mic was. Moore & Wright that I paid for weekly as an apprentice, I paid extra for the slip feature.
My digitalis are all Mitatoyo English/Metric. Always need to have a spare battery.
 
Having to train potential machinists, toolmakers etc. I never found left hand people to be any different from righties. You are expected to be ambidextrous in the world of machining. FYI, I had my dad's M&W 1" micrometer for more than 60 years, in it's original spectacle case. BTW, specs or glasses? doesn't appear to be a word.
Dave A
 
Thinking about the subject of this piece, and getting ready for the day, I opened my wardrobe and looked at my collection of ties….and, fyi, I always used a Windsor knot.

It is also most impressive that there has been all this conversation about slide rules, and nobody has used the term “guessing stick”. Do I recall correctly, that people used to add “SR” after calculations done on a slide rule so as to imply “this may not be absolutely accurate, but if that is needed I’ll do it longhand”?
 
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Vaguely recall that log tables and slide rules are related. Adding logs together is the same as doing multiplication on a slide rule. Working in a "chemi" lab meant we used a 20 inch slide rule or one of those rotary ones and that removed a lot of the guessing!
 
Johnfromstaffs said:
Thinking about the subject of this piece, and getting ready for the day, I opened my wardrobe and looked at my collection of ties….and, fyi, I always used a Windsor knot.
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Thanks for the memory. When I got married, my best man and mate tied my tie for me and he used a Windsor knot because he said it looked neater than the normal knot. I have no idea how he tied it, and even today I could not tie one. When I took the tie off, I pulled it over my head still tied, and it hangs in the wardrobe to this day, Windsor knotted, ready to be put on again. That would be 1971.
Andrew.
 
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devonjim said:
Vaguely recall that log tables and slide rules are related. Adding logs together is the same as doing multiplication on a slide rule. Working in a "chemi" lab meant we used a 20 inch slide rule or one of those rotary ones and that removed a lot of the guessing!
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A slide rule has a scale marked based on logs. So adding the lengths is the same as adding the logs.
The guessing involves positioning the decimal point - as 2 × 3 uses the same bit of the slide rule as 20 × 30 but the user knows (hopefully) one is 6 and the other is 600 :D
 
Johnfromstaffs said:
Thinking about the subject of this piece, and getting ready for the day, I opened my wardrobe and looked at my collection of ties….and, fyi, I always used a Windsor knot.

It is also most impressive that there has been all this conversation about slide rules, and nobody has used the term “guessing stick”. Do I recall correctly, that people used to add “SR” after calculations done on a slide rule so as to imply “this may not be absolutely accurate, but if that is needed I’ll do it longhand”?
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John, i remember guessing stick but not the SR. As I said earlier we were not allowed to use in a statistics class.
 
Brummie a long time ago said:
Thanks for the memory. When I got married, my best man and mate tied my tie for me and he used a Windsor knot because he said it looked neater than the normal knot. I have no idea how he tied it, and even today I could not tie one. When I took the tie off, I pulled it over my head still tied, and it hangs in the wardrobe to this day, Windsor knotted, ready to be put on again. That would be 1971.
Andrew.
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The biggest problem would be tying a Windsor for someone else, either your mate had very good spatial awareness or he stood behind you and reached over your shoulders to do it. While being able to tie a Windsor with no trouble I now have to resort to ready made dickie bows! I always think this is odd, because I can tie my shoes. Fortunately the number of times I need to wear a bow tie is tending closer to zero as each year passes.
 
I could (probably still can) tie my own tie (half Windsor I think) but if asked to tie anyone else's I had to stand behind them :D
A lot of pupils these days (if a tie is part of the uniform) have clip on ties like the police wear.
Gone are the days where it was "miss, can you unknot my tie?" When someone else has pulled it too tight.
 
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mw0njm. said:
cash will soon be out of fashion:)
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As they say Pete "Here today, gone tomorrow"
As far as ties are concerned, does anyone remember the ties on elastic. The tie was permanently tied on a short piece of wire with hooks bent at both ends. A piece of elastic with loops on the end was then attached. They were very neat in appearance. For the last twenty years of my working life I wore such ties because in the job I was in, I was at risk of some irate client grabbing my tie and pulling me forward to assault me. Only happened once and what a shock he got when he pulled it. Never tried it again.
I have a box full of them which, like my suit, only comes out for "Hatches, Matches, and Despatches" occasions
 
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