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Gone out of fashion

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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!
 
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.
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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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!
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
 
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”?
John, i remember guessing stick but not the SR. As I said earlier we were not allowed to use in a statistics class.
 
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.
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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cash will soon be out of fashion:)
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
 
The old joke that goes “I was walking through a cow pasture when my cap blew off, I tried 3 on before I found it.” Seems appropriate looking at the picture above. I see the foreman on the lower left with his bowler, and the gaffer with his trilby, pipe and moustache. Otherwise caps, caps and more caps!
 
My Mother used to wear hats especially on Sunday. I borrowed a hat for a wedding a few years ago and only one other woman was wearing one. My favourite was a bendy "S" shaped half-hat thing which sort of clamped the hair down and stayed on in the wind.
I passed by a funeral just now and it was so windy one gentleman lost his hat, the same thing happened to my sister-in-law at a wedding, perhaps that's why they are no longer fashion.
rosie.
 
Talking of hats, hat pins have disappeared. Probably be regarded as a possible weapon today.

Remember stiletto hair combs ? They used to have a steel tip, useful for sectioning hair before winding hair onto hair rollers/curlers. I have one but the pointed section is made of plastic. Don’t expect the steel tipped ones are made today. Another possible weapon.

Viv.
 
nobody has used the term “guessing stick”.
We called it a 'slip stick' at university but I think that was an 'in-group' thing, just as hole punches or staplers got called 'grompers' from the sound that they made!

There was a fine balance to be had with a slide rule, you wanted it to slide easily but also to stay put once you had it set up. I found them useful for working with resistive voltage dividers. I set the ratio that I needed then ran my eye along the rule looking for near matches of a 'preferred value' resistor on each scale, i.e. 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68, or 82. You can't do that with a calculator, however precise.
 
We called it a 'slip stick' at university but I think that was an 'in-group' thing, just as hole punches or staplers got called 'grompers' from the sound that they made!

There was a fine balance to be had with a slide rule, you wanted it to slide easily but also to stay put once you had it set up. I found them useful for working with resistive voltage dividers. I set the ratio that I needed then ran my eye along the rule looking for near matches of a 'preferred value' resistor on each scale, i.e. 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68, or 82. You can't do that with a calculator, however precise.
Spargone, we used the slip stick term but had forgotten about it. I remember guessing stick because we could not use on Statistics. Our Statistics was used for process analysis and control. WOW you have taken me back a long way!
 
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