what was the name of the log tables we all used at school ?
logs
Jan 30, 2023
Last reply: 3 years ago
18 Replies
Look up "mathematical tables" on ebay, and see how many different editions there are. Then come back and delight us with the information about which *you* used
Dunno about yours, but mine was F. Castles 5 figure log and other tables. Still got my original copy somewhere ....
This one. Probably this copy.
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Blimey. That brings back memories. I think the covers were either blue for 4-figure or beige for 5-figure tables.
And printed in that weird typography whereby different digits are aligned differently, rather than all sitting on the same base line and all extending up by the same amount, and a 1 is written as a capital I. I think printers call it "old style figures" or "lower-case figures". Ah, here we are:
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1962, those tables will be way out of date by now.
Mine seem to have escaped but I still have the slide rule I bought as an apprentice in 1960!
:-)
Mine were called 'log tables'
I have my Castle's logs, and my Faber Castell slide rule, right here!
So much time has past, I now can't use my Thornton's slide rule for toffee.
That's the one!
nah sorry
used to love running my finger nail down the case of my thornton slide rule
sorry BRITISH Thornton
It is arguable that this must be one of the most useless things we attempted to learn. Its all about ratios and how to display them when the dynamics are so great, but these days you just shove in your data to a bit of software, label the various bits and you then print it out.
Brian
Brian Gaff snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote
Not before calculators became affordable.
While slide rules were very useful, they never had the precision that log tables allowed.
Not always.
They're the ones I used. But then, we're all out of date too...
Haven't used a log table in decades. Slide rule much more recently though - mostly just to prove I still could!
Andy
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