Slide Rule People:

Thiis is Leo, back after a long winter of work and travel Much there
is on my mind...

But : The Sighting: a pargraph from the book "Against the Day", by
Thomas Pynchon (Penguin, 2006), p.497. The scene is at Cambridge
University, and about 1904.

"In the briskness of autumn again, everybody reconnected,New colors
of clothing had become fachionable, notably Coronation Red.The
cricket talk was all of Ranji and C,B. Fry, and of course the
Australian season lately under way. Engineering students met in New
Court at high noon for mock duels to see who could draw and calculate
fastest on the new Tavernier-Gravet slide rules it was a la mode to
pack around in leather scabbards that fastened to one´s belt. New
Court in those days was still a resort of the unruly and interest in
calculation soon deferred to drinking beer, as much of it and as
quickly as possible."

Thomas Pynchom usually does his homework and does it well. What is
the slide rule referred to and does it relate to the on-going battle
mentopned often in the book between the "quaternionists" and
the "vectorists"? I might mention that David Hilbert appears in the
novel in a short "walk on", as does Nikolai Tesla, Bela Lagosi and
Groucho Marx. Geographically, the scenes stretch from mining camps in
Colorado to the Balkin Wars, Central Asia and most European capitals.
I highly recommend the book, all 1085 pages of it.

Leo