Tom Swift books were published from 1910 till about WWII targeting boys
with an interest in science. The fictional character's son, Tom Swift
Jr., later had a series devoted to him which was published from the
mid-50s to early 70s.

For fun I ran a search on 'slide rule' in the Tom Swift Jr series and
found many, listed below. Because these are kids' adventure books,
don't expect scientific realism. However, I find that when traveling
for work and there isn't enough quiet or time for focused reading they
make for light, fun diversions and don't take up much room in my Kindle.

Mike Markowski


===== TOM SWIFT and His Atomic Earth Blaster, 1954

Mr. Swift pulled a small slide rule out of his pocket and did some hasty
figuring. "Suppose you dug a pit three feet in diameter," he said. "For
every hundred miles you went down, you'd haul up enough dirt to cover
six square city blocks and piled three times as high as the Empire State
Building!"

--------------------

Two hours later, while Tom was busy with his slide rule working out
structural details of the new blaster, he became aware of voices outside
the laboratory window.

--------------------

Using a slide rule, Tom quickly worked out a number of equations. His
mental calculations had been right. By changing gear ratios in the
power-conversion equipment, he should be able to make the blaster
operate at anywhere from twenty-five to fifty percent higher speeds than
he had first planned.

--------------------

Using pocket slide rules and a handbook of tables borrowed from one of
the company engineers, Tom and Voorhees proceeded to work out the formulas.

===== TOM SWIFT and His Outpost in Space, 1955

Inside, Tom was hard at work with a slide rule. His desk was littered
with papers, each one covered with figures and equations. From time to
time the young scientist paused to feed a new problem into a small
electronic computer.

===== TOM SWIFT on the Phantom Satellite, 1956

"Higher reflectivity," Tom replied. "As a matter of fact, it's twenty
times as bright as the moon. Which reminds me---we still haven't found
out why this satellite glows so brightly when seen from earth."

Bud patted Tom on the shoulder. "Let's not go into that now, genius
boy," he said, "or you'll be slaving over a hot slide rule all night. I
vote we hit the sack."

===== TOM SWIFT in the Race to the Moon, 1958

"You mean a lot of it's going to waste?"

"Sure is, pal." Tom whipped out his slide rule. "If we could harness all
the sun's energy, down here on this earth, we'd get more than three
horsepower from every square foot of surface exposed to the sunshine."

There was a long silence, during which Tom jotted down a number of
mathematical formulas. At one point, he whipped out his slide rule to
work out a series of equations.

===== TOM SWIFT and His Space Solartron, 1958

"But the spectroscope shows that it's pure oxygen," Bud spoke up.

"Yes, which weighs up to exactly one one-thousandth of a gram!"

Chow pushed back his ten-gallon hat and scratched his balding head.
"Reckon that ain't very much, eh?"

"About enough to keep a flea alive for half a second." Tom whipped out
his slide rule and did some rapid figuring. "Chow, with the power I used
to make this much oxygen, you could run your toaster an hour a day for
eighty-one years!"

===== TOM SWIFT and His Electronic Retroscope, 1959

The door had hardly closed behind the three when Tom plunged into his
problem. He whipped out a slide rule and began making rapid calculations.

===== TOM SWIFT and the Cosmic Astronauts, 1960

"Five minutes to, boss. Brand my
pemmican pie, you ought to stop workin' your
brain so hard! All them squiggles an' numbers
you been figgerin' out is enough to drive a cow
hand loco!"

Tom grinned and laid down his slide rule as the Texan uncovered the
lunch dishes. "Mm! Hot roast beef sandwiches and lemon meringue pie!
This is more than I bargained for, Chow."

--------------------

THE next morning found Tom eagerly at work in his outpost laboratory on
the development of a cosmic reactor. Most of his slide-rule calculations
and working sketches were already done.

===== TOM SWIFT and the Visitor from Planet X, 1961
Nevertheless, Tom decided, the basic idea was sound. Grabbing pencil and
slide rule, he began to dash off page after page of diagrams and equations.

===== TOM SWIFT and the Electronic Hydrolung, 1961

The next morning found the young inventor hard at work in his private
laboratory. He was tapping his head with his slide rule and frowning at
a blackboard scrawled with equations when Bud dropped in for a visit.

===== TOM SWIFT and the Asteroid Pirates, 1963

"Are we disturbing the march of science?"

"Sandy! Phyl!" Tom exclaimed. He tossed aside his slide rule and jumped
up to greet them. "What brings you girls to Fearing?"

===== TOM SWIFT and His 3-D Telejector, 1964

After the three had left, Tom seated himself at his work desk. Slide
rule in hand, he tackled the job of designing circuits that would enable
him to intensify the picture-signal impulses into bursts of visible light.

===== TOM SWIFT and the Mystery Comet, 1966

The rest of the day Tom spent hunched over his workbench with a slide
rule and pencil. Shortly after five-thirty, with his head still full of
circuit diagrams and calculations, Tom left the plant in his low-slung
silver sports car and drove to Shopton Airport.