Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site

An unusual demilitarized slide rule And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. – Isaiah 2:4 Like almost any human invention t…

I was trying to find storage space for some stuff when I ran into a drawer full of… this.

A unique hand-made industrial calculator Some of my favorite slide rules are the one-of-a-kind handmade ones, and while most have an obvious function, this one kept me in the dark for a long time.

The Mobaco construction system My grandchildren play with Lego.

The Logomat Pfiffikus 2001 The slide rule in the photo next to the quarter is 48 mm in diameter and weighs 5 grams.

Computing with punched cards How much does a software program weigh?

These days computing is done on silicon chips, and before that there were vacuum tubes, and before those there were gear systems… but the earliest computers used beads, and they were in use far longer than any other kind of computer.

So I was waiting for the elevator at the Jerusalem train station.

I have maybe 100 slide rules in my collection, and each once belonged to a real scientist or engineer that made good use of it.

When you take a slide rule out of its box, you are treated to a marvelous sight of multiple intricate scales, numbers and captions.