relative age

From: Jeff Kaneko <Jeff.Kaneko_at_ifrsys.com>
Date: Thu Oct 23 16:41:38 1997

> > You folks are all young sprouts... when I was in H.S. (1938) our AV
> >equipment was a wind up phonograph (disks, not cylinders,) and a lantern
> >slide projector. Once someone from Bell Telephone brought in a movie
> >projector and showed films! Calculations? they were done with a pencil on
> >"foolscap". And no, I didn't have Socrates for a teacher.
>
> I went through HS on a slide rule. Someone brought in an electromechanical
                         ^^^^^^^^^^
> calculator to my math class, and I fell in love with it. <sigh>
>

You know, I think my generation was the last to learn about using
the slide rule in highschool (I graduated in 1979). In 1975, when I
was a freshman, all students in my school were requied to learn
it; it was part of the ISM (Intro.to Sci. Method) program which all
students had to pass in order to graduate.

When asked "WHY?", school administrators had a plausible answer: "It
teaches you how to read scales and graduations commonly found on lab
equipment."

OK, fair enough. Of course, nowadays I imagine most of the
analytical balances in use are digital . . .
Received on Thu Oct 23 1997 - 16:41:38 BST