Hi group;
There is a lengthy article with two pictures about the University
at Buffalo's slide rule and calculator exhibit. The article is mostly
about slide rules. The pictures are of rules. Go to
http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol34/vol34n13/articles/SlideRules.html

This is a very good article with one of the curators demonstrating
how to wear your slide rule "gunslinger" style.

The second is a reprint from a magazine article dealing with Social
issues in Society called the Visible Self. It was reprinted from an
article from the New York Times July 21st 1998 and it is entitled
"Scruffy is Badge of Pride, But some Physicists Long For Cool" It
basically speaks of the time when scientists and engineers carried slide
rules visibly to proclaim their occupation and with the advent of the
electronic calculator slide rules vanished and no substitute icon of
professional status was available. It mentions Keuffel & Esser as being
a top of the line slide rule and an emblem of professional identity that
suggested intelligence and education. The authors name is Malcolm W.
Browne.
My wife gave me the article today, she is doing graduate work and is
presently researching peoples attire as a social issue. Subscribers to
the NY Times would be able to access this article through the online
archives. I will see if I can find a link somewhere via the web where
everyone might be able to view it.

The last sighting is in the movie "Sky Captain And The World Of
Tommorrow". About 15 minutes or so into the film the scientist Dex is
using what appears to be a Nestler or Faber Castell rule to do some
triangulating of a position on a map. There is also a circular on the
table, but you have to look close for that one. There are two spots
with the rule, about three or four seconds each. I'm not much of a
Science Fiction fan, but this was a pretty good movie, a mixture of old
and new technology, kinda puts you in mind of Isaac Asimov's work with
all the robots in the movie.
A few years before the end of the slide rule, K&E hired the Futures
Group to publish a projected report of the future and how technology
would advance exponentially and people would be living in joined domed
cities with outside transporation not requiring wheels or petroleum
fuels. New and more advanced slide rules had to be designed and
manufactured to meet the needs of this technology the summary
mentioned. It is ironic that the group did not predict the demise of
the slide rule with it's predictions of advancing technology.
Bill Drylie
P. S. A Sioux medicine man here in North Dakota once told me that it is
traditional thought for them that someone or something lives on only as
long as the last person who remembers it. That is why they pass stories
of their tribe and their tradtions from one generation to the next. It
seems to me it is like this with slide rules. I have a feeling that
with the help of groups like this, the slide rule will live on from
generation to generation.