Greetings Group ---

A sighting to add to the list.......
Perhaps the most recent film footage of a slide rule in use.....
For Craig Kielhofer and others......

While watching TV one evening this week on a trip to New Mexico, in the
recently made for TV movie "Path To War".... about President Johnson..... a
technical advisor of some sort.... in a tense strategy meeting about troop
commitments and casualties in Viet Nam.... pulled out a slide rule to
calculate quickly the number of troops, while the others waited for his
answer. Except that Donald Sutherland as Clark Clifford, who had an affinity
for math, and who became Lyndon's Secretary of Defense after Robert McNamara,
mentally calculated and stated the number.... 60,000.... before the slide
rule user stated, "57,600".

It was an interesting bit of irony.........
-- The actual quickness of the slide rule results.
-- The unnecessary accuracy of these results (the technical fellow considered
the accuracy to be relevant and Clark clifford was interested only in an
answer to the nearest 10,000).
-- The fact that the slide rule results were TOO accurate.... quite the
opposite of our usual idea.
-- The fact that the slide rule results were too slow for Clifford.

Ted Hume
San Angelo, Texas




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