Group: sliderule Message: 29415 From: willdouglas2002 Date: 06/02/2006
Subject: Slide Rule in Apollo 13
Greetings to the list!

I've been re-watching Apollo 13 (which I got for my birthday this
year) and I've been trying to identify the slide rule used therein.

Actually, there are two SRs seen, but one is a duplex only seen in a
long shot, so I have no hope of identifying it. The other is in a
closeup, which gives many clues to its identity.

I spent many fruitless hours searching the web for slide rules which
had a similar scale layout, but didn't find any that exactly matched.

It wasn't until the fifth or sixth time I had the SR freeze-framed on
the screen that I noticed that it was a pocket rule, not a 10".

That helped me narrow it down to about three, but the one I found most
closely corresponding to it was the Lafayette 99-7030, as pictured on
Mike Konshak's excellent site Slide Rule Museum.

The only difference between Mike's picture and the one on the screen
is that the one on the screen has a gauge mark at C (1.128) which
Mike's picture doesn't have.

Does anyone know if this is a more recent Lafayette, or possibly a
later version of the Relay/Ricoh OEM rule? Or if someone else made
such a rule? I'm just curious.

Thanks for any assistance you can render in this quest.