In the June 2013 issue of the french magazine "Ciel & Espace" (Sky and Space), there is a 4-pages article about : "A slide rule to conquer the Moon"
excerpt
Quote:
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On 13 April 1970 at the accident of Apollo 13, the slide rule is omnipresent on the ship and in control rooms. The small hinged bar invented three centuries earlier will play a central role in the rescue (...)Ironically, the rescue of Apollo 13 marks the swan song of this tool. In 1972, the first scientific calculator, the HP35, arrives on the market and the men of the NASA will use it more and more as it cost will go down.
(...)
But the slide rule is not quite a dusty memory today : One man of the NASA continues to resist. (...) Evan Horowittz (...) does not hesitate to use his slide rule because it has one unsurpassed quality : It requires to consider the variables that are manipulated and prevents the illusions about the accuracy of the numbers that appear on the screen."A good approximate answer will always be better than a false result, even if it is with 10 decimal places", he says philosophically.
http://www.dipcli.com/reader/boutik/ciel_et_espace/
humm : Not sure that " swan song " means something in english. In french it means "the beginning of the end" ...
Edited: 2 June 2013, 4:27 p.m.