Calculating in Everyday Life: slide rules, tables, calculators and other mathematical devices - Paperback

by Karl Kleine (Editor)

Today we are accustomed to electronic computers of all kinds in our life. Obvious cases are PCs, tablets, pocket calculators or the ubiquious smartphone, but more and more they are part of other devices so that we often are not conscious of them, like stoves and other kitchen appliances, TVs, cars, photo cameras, etc. How on earth were we able to cope with life in the pre-electronic age without such computing facilities? The IM2017 with its theme 'Calculating in Everyday Life' takes a look back at slide rules and disks, various forms of mechanical calculators and other devices and their use for many mundane and often trivial calculation tasks, then and often still today. Next to that we have the traditional potpourri of reports on calculation devices and methods, as in every year's IM, in particular logarithmic ones and slide rules in all variations

Author Biography

Karl Kleine is a retired professor of computer science, who worked on concepts, methods and tools for software development. His second line of professional interest were reliable and trustworthy IT infrastructures. But for the last two decades his research area became the history of computing for science and engineering in the pre-computer aera, up to the 1960s and the computational devices used. His particular interest lies in instruments based on the logarithmic principle and its practical use in all forms of slide rules and disks. The subject lies in the intersection of the history of mathematics, the history of science and the history of engineering. Prof. Kleine is member of the Oughtred Society, the German RST, the British UKSRC and the Dutch KRING as well as professional computer science organizations. He is a fellow of the Oughtred Society and got the Oughtred Society Award in 2014.