Obsolete Stuff

[Black_Fly]

I ran across this old engineer's scale, from my cartographic drafting days. I started hand drafting maps from pencil manuscripts to scribe coat, which could be used as a huge negative in the dark room to make copies onto photosensitive mylar, which could then be used for field blueprints. Back then, the finished scale was pre-determined, and civil engineering used feet per inch almost universally in the US. That changed with GIS systems and satellite technology. Anyway, each side of the scale is a different units per inch. So, if you had a 60 scale map (1"=60'), you could measure on the 60 face. Many engineering map products were 40-100 scale ones. The 20 scale face could be used for a 200 scale map measurements also just by multiplying by 10. This linear measurement helped locating objects from a grid system
.

Show me your obsolete tools and gadgets. There's a million of them, more every day.

 

[yknpdlr]

i have one of those triangular scales, as well as a couple of slide manual rules. I did not much have need to use the scale as intended, but I could not have lived in college without my faithful slide rule in the early 1970's. Within a short time, 4 function calculators became available, but at first, they sold for $800. Most waited for the $400 version. When the TI-59 first came out, I also waited until its price came down to around $400. That was a lot then, but I learned to efficiently program it on 3 inch magnetic card strips, with a maximum of 99 key steps. I programmed it to do spherical trig for calculations of celestial navigation and distance and angle measurements over the surface of the earth, when I was an AF flight navigator, all calculations programmed within 99 key press steps. I'm sure I still have all of that stuff, but deeply buried in boxes in the basement, I will not drag them out for show.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

I found my old slide rule recently while digging through storage. Might have to relearn how to use it just for fun.

Dad's engineering scale, still in its sleeve...


I'll see your scale and raise you a 6' ruler.


How about this stinky thing?