In the hopes of "preserving these delightful devices for future generations," this collector of slide rules covers everything one could possibly want to know about this crude form of analog computer: from its invention in the 17th century to manufacturers- retailers, 1850-1998, and the Oughtred Society for collectors. Includes a glossary with biographies, patent data, component specs, dating and valuing, care, historical milestones, and illustrations

Originally published in German in 1977 as the first major book on the history of the slide rule since Florian Cajori's A History of the Logarithmic Slide Rule, this newly revised and translated edition of Slide Rules, A Journey Through Three Centuries, offers readers a fresh, more Continental perspective on this most fascinating of calculating instruments. The book is an important piece of historical and technological research, in which the author includes the history of the slide rule from its beginnings in the 17th century, through its gradual adoption and development worldwide during the 19th and 20th centuries, to its sudden and almost complete demise in the mid-1970s. He also covers the evolution of various slide rule components, technologies, and manufacturing processes, as well as histories of the major slide rule manufacturers and their product lines during the last 100 years. There are detailed references to original sources throughout, which the reader may use as a springboard to further study and research. Readable and very informative, this is a book that, together with those of Cajori and Peter Hopp, any slide rule collector or historian of technology will find of great interest and real benefit.

For hundreds of years, the slide rule has been a useful calculating device. In his second book, Joint Slide Rules: Sectors, 2-foot 2-fold and similar slide rules, expert Peter M. Hopp examines the joint rule, completing an important but neglected part of slide rule history. The book is a comprehensive account of joint rules and contains detailed information on over two hundred joint slide rule makers from around the world. Calculating devices that preceded the slide rule, such as sectors and timber rules, are examined, as are special joint rules that incorporate additional elements, such as callipers. Special jointed devices, such as dip rods that allow calculation, are also included. With the addition of over one hundred detailed illustrations of joint slide rules and a glossary of terms, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in joint slide rules and their history.

Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.