page_title: Slide rule
section_title: Decline
hierarchical_section_title: Slide rule / History / Decline
caption_attribution_description: TI-30 calculator. First version with red LED display.
context_page_description: The slide rule, or slipstick, is a mechanical analog computer. The slide rule is used mainly for multiplication and division, and also for "scientific" functions such as roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but usually not for addition or subtraction.
  There are many different styles of slide rules. They are usually linear or circular. They have a standardised set of markings. These scales are used for mathematical computations. Some slide rules have been made for special use, as for aviation or finance. Those slide rules have special scales for those applications, as well as normal scales.
  William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the 1600s. The slide rule is based on the work on logarithms by John Napier. Before electronic calculators were developed, slide rules were the tool used most often in science and engineering. The use of slide rules continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s even as digital computing devices were gradually introduced; but around 1974 the pocket calculator made the slide rule largely obsolete and most suppliers left the business.
context_section_description: The importance of the slide rule began to diminish as electronic computers, a new but very scarce resource in the 1950s, became widely available to technical workers during the 1960s. The introduction of Fortran in 1957 made computers practical for solving modest size mathematical problems. IBM introduced a series of more affordable computers, the IBM 650 (1954), IBM 1620 (1959), IBM 1130 (1965) addressed to the science and engineering market. John Kemeny's BASIC programming language (1964) made it easy for students to use computers. The DEC PDP-8 minicomputer was introduced in 1965.
  Computers also changed the nature of calculation. With slide rules, there was a great emphasis on working the algebra to get expressions into the most computable form. Users of slide rules would simply approximate or drop small terms to simplify the calculation. Fortran allowed complicated formulas to be typed in from textbooks without the effort of reformulation. Numerical integration was often easier than trying to find closed form solutions for difficult problems. The young engineer asking for computer time to solve a problem that could have been done by a few swipes on the slide rule became a humorous cliché. Many computer centers had a framed slide rule hung on a wall with the note "In case of emergency, break glass."
  Another step toward the replacement of slide rules with electronics was the development of electronic calculators for scientific and engineering use. The first included the Wang Laboratories LOCI-2, introduced in 1965, which used logarithms for multiplication and division and the Hewlett-Packard HP-9100, introduced in 1968. The HP-9100 had trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan) in addition to exponentials and logarithms. It used the CORDIC (coordinate rotation digital computer) algorithm, which allows for calculation of trigonometric functions using only shift and add operations. This method facilitated the development of ever smaller scientific calculators.
  The last nail in the coffin for the slide rule was the launch of pocket-sized scientific calculators, of which the 1972 Hewlett-Packard HP-35 was the first. Such calculators became known as "slide rule" calculators since they could perform most or all of the functions on a slide rule. At several hundred dollars, even this was considered expensive for most students. While professional slide rules could also be quite expensive, drug stores often sold basic plastic models for under $20 USD. But by 1975, basic four-function electronic calculators could be purchased for under $50. By 1976 the TI-30 offered a scientific calculator for under $25. After this time, the market for slide rules dried up quickly as small scientific calculators became affordable.
caption: TI-30
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