A blast from the past....non bee.

[deknow]

It is if there is a shipwreck involved.
Deknow

[Seymore]

Lol - y'all!

[deknow]

You can look this up in the ABCXYZ...at least the older versions had this account, paraphrased (from another thread in 2008) it is:


there is also at least one interesting historical account that relates to these "lozenge plates"[That form the bottom of the cell]. apparently, there was a discrepancy between the measured angles of these plates, and the theoretical. there was no resolution in this...until a ship wreck occurred. in looking into the cause of the shipwreck it was determined that the navigation was done properly....but that the standard set of log tables had an error in one entry that caused the ship to navigate into the rocks. this same entry was used in the theoretical calculation of the angles, and once corrected in the table, the theoretical and the measured matched

deknow

[beemandan]

It is if there is a shipwreck involved.

Are ya gonna tell it or not?
Edit: Posted at the same time as the previous.....ya told it.

[cerezha]

I do not know if "logarithmic tables" were involved also, but we had another shipwreck in recent days aiming to Mars. Apparently, there were discrepancy in units between manufacturer and JPL - some used miles and another, kilometers. Space-ship missed... the target... Sergey

[beemandan]

And then there is the Costa Concordia…but then I’d like to think that their logarithmic tables were a little more current.

[max2]

"I was in the last class in my high school that learned how to use one of those- 1973 or 74, then our Scientific Calculations and Measurements class got TWO Texas Instruments TI-50 calculators. We thought we were pretty hot stuff..."

Same here and I still have the slide rule but the Texas has packed it in yonks ago. We used to share one Texas between about 20 of us - I think the first one cost more then $ 300. Ten years later they gave a more powerful calculator away when you had two or more films developed...but that is another story!