There are those who may come across this web site and wonder what on earth a slide rule was, why it was ever important, and why should anyone be showing any interest in the 21st century. What it was will become obvious elsewhere, the two ‘why’ questions could be considered as follows:

Our media regularly carries comments on the declining standards of mathematics across the whole population, usually vigorously denied by our politicians. For those of us of ‘a certain age’, where mathematics was a fact of life and mental arithmetic a capability instilled rigorously and regularly, it is very difficult to see how any of this or previous government ‘puff’ about standards improving holds any water at all. There are those who date the start of this decline to the demise of the slide rule and the advent of the cheap electronic calculator, and again it is very difficult to argue against this.

Ownership of a slide rule was a rite-of-passage that required much thought in its selection, purchase, and then learning its effective use. Ownership of a calculator can never replicate this. Using a slide rule meant that you developed a capability with, and understanding of, numbers that is certainly not the same with an electronic calculator. Calculators, even the most expensive, do not have the same cachet or permanence that a slide rule did, and it may be that this very impermanence was the start of a slovenliness and indolence in our mathematical thinking and actions – just press a few buttons and it has to be right!