[ale] Engineering Archaeology

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

OK, one more slide rule story from me.

The year was 1968 and I was a freshman at Drexel Institute of Technology
(renamed Drexel University a couple of years later).

I was sitting in a room of about 300 freshmen taking a two hour physics
final.   A student came in about twenty minutes late to the test and the
professor looked a little flustered and hesitated to hand them the test
because "There is no way you will be able to finish this in time".

The student kind of smirked, took the test, sat down and pulled out the
first electronic calculator I had ever seen.   It was huge and ran off "D"
Cell batteries, with nixie tubes for the display.  It definitely did not
fit into your pocket unless you were Paul Bunyan.

Cries of "unfair" went up from the rest of the slide-rule using students,
and the professor addressed the rest of the students saying that the
calculator was a tool just like the slide rule was a tool, and that he
could not ban it from the test.

The student finished the test and left the room 20 minutes before the
two-hour test was completed.   I never knew what grade they received on the
test.

md

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 1:45 PM Joe Morris via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> Not so long ago, md wrote:
> > >A little while later, I was in a used bookstore and found a handbook
> Isaac
> > Asimov wrote in 60's. I still haven't learned how to use it! Maybe when I
> > retire?
> >
> > You mean this one?
> >
> > https://archive.org/details/easyintroduction00isaa
> >
> > Asimov not only shows you HOW to use it, but he tells you WHY it works
> and
> > even shows you how to build your own.
> >
> > Very much like Open Source Software.
>
> Yep! Glad it's online. Asimov wrote an astonishing variety of non-fiction
> I still have the collections of his F&SF essays
>
> --
>   Joe Morris                       Atlanta history blog
>   joe at jolomo.net                   http://atlhistory.com
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