Constructing and Understanding New and Old Scales on Slide Rules

TL;DR

This paper explores the practical challenges of constructing and understanding both new and old slide rule scales, offering guidance on their design, realization, and relationships to improve future scale development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the technical problems in slide rule scale construction and clarifies the relationships among different scales, aiding future design efforts.

Findings

Identification of key practical problems in scale construction

Methodology for realizing scale theory in practice

Insights into relationships among various slide rule scales

Abstract

We discuss the practical problems arising when constructing any (new or old) scales on slide rules, i.e. realizing the theory in the practice. This might help anyone in planning and realizing (mainly the magnitude and labeling of) new scales on slide rules in the future. In Sections 1-7 we deal with technical problems, Section 8 is devoted to the relationship among different scales. In the last Section we provide an interesting fact as a surprise to those readers who wish to skip this long article.