Two SR Sightings:

The first may have been mentioned previously, so forgive me if so. I
was watching Jimmy Stewart in "The Flight of the Phoenix" the other
night. Toward the end of the movie, the German playing the part of an
airplane designer uses a slide rule to calculate something. It was
not clear enough for me to guess at the type. But as he exits the
room, he casually has it sticking out of his back pocket!

The following is in the Letters section of a recent Physics Today:

"Another Fermi Tale"
During a lecture at Los Alamos around 1945, Enrico Fermi was at the
chalkboard discussing how a dependent variable-it may have been a
cross section-varied with the independent variable, which may have
been energy. Initially, the independent variable rose steeply, but
when a criterion was satisfied, the steep rise ceased and the
dependent variable thereafter remained approximately constant. To
show this graphically, Fermi drew an x-axis and a y-axis on the
chalkboard. He then drew the curve, which initially rose steeply and
then leveled off.
Thus far, Fermi had drawn three lines to illustrate his point and had
given them no markings of anything quantitative. He then stepped back
from the board, thought for a moment, took a six-inch slide rule from
his shirt pocket, and did a quick calculation. The result of the
calculation prompted him to say that the level part of the curve was
not as high as he had drawn it. Going back to the board, he used his
fingers to erase the horizontal part of the curve and then carefully
redrew it an inch or two lower than it had been initially. The room
was silent for a moment, and then laughter erupted. Fermi smiled and
continued the lecture.

Quoted by Albert A. Bartlett, Physics Today March 2003, p. 13


:) Tom Pugsley