People and Their Slide Rules Peter Hopp, United Kingdom Francis Harvey Compton Crick; 1916 – 2004 James Dewey Watson; 1928 I have alternated between famous and not so famous people in my selection of candidates to be featured in this “People and Slide Rules” part of the JOS on-line Bulletin – which by the way, I think is an excellent production. This time it is the turn of someone famous and my selection is of “Watson and Crick” or James Watson and Francis Crick, the discoverers of DNA and its Double Helix at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge in 1953, and subsequently winners of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The selection of this pair, better known and more colloquially generally referred to as “Watson and Crick” is from a couple of perspectives. Firstly, there are at least three images of the pair with Crick (not Watson) holding a slide rule. Looking at the images it is pretty obvious that all were taken at the one session sometime in 1953. This makes them the second most prolifically photographed famous people to be featured with a slide rule. The second perspective is that it is unusual that 3 different photographs taken on the same day should have been featured in a number of different articles. The slide rule itself is unusual, in that it is neither a 10” desk rule, nor a 5” pocket slide rule, it is something in between. Also Crick is always using it as a pointer or a “prop” and it is not obvious why Crick, a biologist, should ever have used a slide rule! My first two images are of Watson & Crick with the model of the DNA helix. The first image (Fig. 1) was used by a number of newspapers in 2003, including the London Times and the Daily Telegraph, on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA, and its announcement in the journal Nature. In this picture Crick has the slide rule in his right hand and he and Watson who were photographed by the model of the helix, appear to be sharing a joke. The second picture (Fig. 2) is very similar, this time Crick is using the slide rule as a pointer, slide extended, to point at the very prototype helix made up on laboratory retort stands. This image was used in his Daily Telegraph obituary on Friday July 30th 2004: Francis Crick OM FRS, biologist, 08.06.1916 - 28.07.2004, aged 88 years. James Watson is still very much alive, aged 80 this year. Our third picture (Fig. 3) was used by the London Times in their obituary of Francis Crick on the same day as the Telegraph. This is a much gentler picture of the two sharing a cup of tea and obviously enjoying each other’s company in a room that was very typical of 1950’s institutions – cluttered desk, painted brick and steel framed windows that were draughty as anything, premier league universities notwithstanding. The slide rule this time is in Crick’s lap as he uses both hands to hold his teacup. These images are obviously iconic. I have also seen them used in the USA at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, probably in 2003 at an exhibition marking the anniversary of the DNA discovery. At the Smithsonian exhibition there was a mock up of each of Watson & Crick’s offices in Cambridge. Both mock-ups were viewable through a window, both offices had a slide rule on the desk, neither was the small slide rule used by Crick in the photographs, neither slide rule was obviously English! I hope that everyone else is enjoying this series as much as I am producing it. It is an excellent way of using the images in my collection, and so far someone has sent me a new and relevant image following each new Bulletin, long may that continue, and many thanks. If you have any images of famous or not-so-famous people pictured with their slide rules, please email the images to Peter. Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Men of Collecting Slide Rules IJzebrand Schuitema, The Netherlands Introduction by Otto van Poelje In the Netherlands, the name of IJzebrand Schuitema is well known because he was one of the early slide rule collectors in the 1980’s and he founded the Dutch Circle in 1992 with a few fellow collectors. At the end of 2007 he has wrote a personal history about his experiences during more than 25 years of collecting slide rules. This book has been distributed in small numbers to country representatives of the slide rule community, and will be publicly available later this year. IJzebrand feels that publications like this one might be –and even should be - written by anyone who has been active in collecting slide rules or researching their history. Here follows his plea for everybody to write and publish personal recollections of the collector’s life. -Otto Summer 2006, being on holiday abroad, I read Volume 2 of The Pelican Book: "Men of Mathematics", written by E.T.Bell. He describes the lives and achievements of many famous mathematicians of history. In the "Preface" is stated: "Although their work is indispensable for an appreciation of much of science and philosophy, the great mathematicians are far less well-known than the great scientists and philosophers. Yet several of them have had interesting lives ........ ". And then 14 people having lived in the period 1793-1918 are described and analyzed in their activities and successes and, many of them, discussed in their relations with each other. When I had finished this Volume, I started thinking about the period 1980-2007, the period that collecting slide rules and historical research of this aspect started and came to an activity of many people, all of them mostly in their state of retirement and having experienced the slide rule during their active life. And comparing that with the book having read, I thought it might be interesting to be able to read the private histories of some of these collectors who have spent much time and energy and perhaps much money into this activity, because all they have done gives altogether a very interesting view on the subject what has been done by whom to get the history of the slide rule saved for all next generations. When these collectors hadn't started their activities, it would be impossible for next generations - our children and grandchildren - to start up all this because all archives, objects, manufacturing firms, designers, etc. would not exist anymore. After having thought about all this I started going through my many correspondence of the first years of my collecting hobby, reread several hundreds of letters and many other documents and decided to write my own history. I first made a kind of scheme of subjects to be discussed. This was a list of 18 entrances to the planned private book. These 18 chapters are: 1. Way and result of looking after slide rules; 2. Anecdotes (related to chapt.1); 3. Buying stocks in bookshops and office stationers; 4. Visiting production firms; 5. Contacts with former representatives of production firms; 6. Search for manuals and books; 7. Search for patents; 8. Organizing exhibitions of slide rules; 9. Contact with former designers; 10. Writing and publishing articles in all kinds of magazines; 11. Contacts with some collectors in The Netherlands and abroad; 12. Founding the Dutch Collector's circle; 13. Swapping, buying and selling slide rules; 14. The international slide rule catalogue; 15. Organizing international meetings; 16. Writing and publishing books on slide rule history; 17. Taking part in activity: Collector of the year; 18. My collection. I spent to each of these chapters a few pages. Each chapter could be a book for its own, but I wrote only the most important aspects of all these entrances. If necessary to give a better insight in special historical details, I added in total 16 supplements such as letters, lists, documents and many more. All together it takes about 100 pages. The book is ready now in English version. My suggestion is, that other collectors, having been active in this same field, and having time and energy to start a comparable activity writing their own history, do the same as I have done up to now, with their specific own entrances to the subject. If there will be several, or preferably many collectors, who like to join this project, we could try to make a series of books like mine and create a kind of small library, which will be, hopefully, at the end of our activities representative for the collecting of slide rules and their historical history, performed in the last quarter of the 20th century. Let all of us think about this idea, and perhaps we can discuss this theme during the international meeting 2008 in England. Printing this book was quite expensive. Therefore I decided to make my book known to all who want to read it by a CD. How to get one is to find on the web-site of our "Circle": www.rekenlinialen.org. A Slide Rule Surprise! Clay Castleberry, Oroville, California Bliss...Relief...Stress...Panic...Psychosis! As a retired County Engineer/Director of Public Works in California, US, I’ve been blessed by being asked to serve as an interim Director in about 35 Cities and Counties, since retirement. Wherever I go, I take about 20 slide rules and other engineering antiques for display and conversation pieces. I recently completed another one year stint as interim director for Sutter County. One of my engineering displays is an original 4 pole Gunter Chain ( 66 feet) made in Sheffield England, by J.C. Chesterman, of Sheffield Steel, of course, circa 1800-1825. My tenure must have been acceptable to the staff of Sutter County Public Works as they crafted and presented me with the pictured 48 inch slide rule as a memento of my stay with them. Although not as accurate as those made by Keuffel and Esser’s dividing engines, the rule does have a semblance of a logarithmic scale, and it speaks to the challenges of being an interim director of public works, in Sutter County. As further proof of the staff’s awareness of my fondness for slide rules, my going away coffee and dessert, featured a cake with a beautiful slide rule designed in the icing. It was the second opportunity to have one's slide rule and eat it too, - as we did at the summer 2007 California Oughtred Society dessert at Bob Otnes' home. Bliss...Relief...Stress...Panic...Psychosis! Fire! Tom Dilatush, Jamul, California Toward the end of last October, we had a very bad scare. A series of wind-driven wildfires burned about 20% of San Diego County -- just three years after an earlier wildfire had burned almost 25% of the county. Though the fire burned to within sight of our home, we survived intact -- my wife and I, our three dogs, nine cats, and our property (including my collection of over 2,000 slide rules), all undamaged. Many of our neighbors lost their homes (over 500 homes just one valley to the south of us); several people died and about 25 were injured. We were so very fortunate, more even than may be obvious: our home is right smack in the middle of the largest piece of San Diego County that has remained unburned for over twenty five years... Every summer and fall, San Diego County has a “fire season” -- a period when the chaparral vegetation is dry (we often have no rain between April and December), and periodically powerful winds blow hot, dry air from the desert. These are the notorious “Santa Ana” winds, and when they blow, everyone who lives here pays close attention to the news, for that’s when we’re in danger of a wildfire kicking up. That’s exactly what happened this past October: a particularly nasty Santa Ana, with sustained 40 MPH+ winds, and four different accidental fires in widely separated places in the county. Mere hours later, thousands of acres of chaparral was ablaze, and thousands of homes were threatened. The fires burned an area as large as some entire states, and parts of the burned areas are quite densely inhabited. The firefighters did an excellent job protecting lives and property, but there’s only so much anyone can do in the face of an angry Mother Nature. When the fires first ignited, I started keeping vigil on the Internet (where there are excellent sources of information available, including satellite imagery) and on my scanner (where I could listen to the fire crews working). My goal was simple enough: to know some time in advance if our home was seriously threatened. We passed that point on the second day of the fires, when it became clear that either of two fires -- one to the north of us, the other to the south -- could run over our property in the space of just a few hours. The really scary thing about wildfires in the chaparral is how fast they spread. The fire front can advance at 25 MPH or even faster, as the Santa Ana winds drive hot embers out in front of the actual fire. Vast quantities of these embers blow out of the fire and pile up in front of any obstacle: a home, a tree trunk, a shrub, or a fence post. Once they pile up, they heat up fuel around them and start up another fire, which bursts up incredibly quickly in the wind. In this manner, a chaparral wildfire advances in leaps and bounds, racing downwind faster than you can run -- even faster than you can drive on a back-country unpaved road. If such a fire is upwind of your home, you can be overrun just minutes after you actually see the fire. Once we realized we were in imminent danger, Debbie (my wife) and I went into “evacuation” mode. We’d practiced and discussed this many times before, and our priorities were clear. In order: us, our animals, and our irreplaceable possessions. So we started packing our vehicles (my pickup truck and our little RV). The animals went into crates and into the RV. Our important papers, some art on our walls, my collection of genealogical materials, our computer (with its precious collection of photos), and my slide rule collection went next. I keep most of my slide rules in plastic tubs, about three feet long, twenty inches wide, and six inches deep. These were safe to pile into the back of my pickup. The most difficult part of my collection to transport was my cylinders. I have about 40 cylindrical slide rules, many of which are physically quite large. Some have their own wooden boxes; those were easy. Others (especially Nestlers and Logas) have no box at all. I normally store them on shelves, covered with dust-cloths. Each of these had to be carefully wrapped or boxed, and very carefully stowed in the cab of my truck. By the time we got done packing away my slide rules, the entire bed of my truck, and every cubic inch of the cab, were stuffed. The next day we got the evacuation order. It took us just a few minutes to roll, but only because we’d spent about eight hours the preceding day packing up. Friends in Chula Vista, some 40 miles away, had offered us shelter. I drove the RV, with three upset dogs and nine yowling cats for company. Debbie drove my pickup, with so much that was precious to us piled into the back and in the cab. We drove out the south side of our valley, toward the Harris Fire that threatened us most of all. At that point, the fire front was about 8 miles from our home at its closest. We drove first to the northeast, past the Lake Barrett reservoir -- and to the southeast, we saw a scene that looked like a Hollywood version of some disaster. Blackened ground, charred tree-trunks, columns of smoke, and actively burning areas scattered over the ten or so square miles visible to us. It was terrifying. After a long, slow, and very tense drive, we finally arrived at our friend’s home in Chula Vista. For the next five days, Debbie and I lived in the RV with our dogs; our cats stayed in their crates in a bedroom inside the house. I posted to my blog practically non-stop that whole period, as the only thing I was capable of focusing on were the fires. That whole five days was a roller-coaster for us -- our emotional state depended, moment by moment, on the wind direction and intensity, and the fire fighters latest successes or failures. But on Friday -- the last day of the out-of-control wildfires -- we got our worst scare. A piece of the Harris Fire broke through the fire lines just south of our house. At that point, the winds were blowing from the south -- so the fire was burning straight toward our home. Webcams on a nearby mountain peak, just two miles south of our house, allowed us to watch the fire’s progress in near real time. We watched as the column of ugly black smoke marched closer and closer to our home, seemingly inexorable. This was even more terrifying than that evacuation drive. Right at the last possible moment, the fire fighters somehow made a “last stand”, along a road called Lyons Valley Road, and stopped the Harris Fire from advancing any further north. That evening, the winds died down for good. The very next day -- Saturday -- the fire fighters went into “mopping up” mode, and we were allowed to go back home. I don’t have the words to convey how good it felt to drive into our driveway and see the house still there. More than that, our property was utterly undamaged -- we didn’t even have the thick layer of ash that most of San Diego was covered with. The sky was clear and blue, and standing in our front yard, you’d have no idea of the hell the county had just gone through. We unpacked, and took inventory as we went. Total damages: I somehow managed to lose my good camera tripod, and I stupidly left my cell phone in my pants pocket when they went through the laundry. That’s it. The animals had a few more neuroses, but otherwise they were fine. The zillions of papers and photos in my genealogical collection were undamaged. And the slide rule collection survived unscathed, even the relatively delicate cylinders. Even the cell phone survived in the end -- I put it out in the sunlight for a day to thoroughly dry, and then it just worked when I turned it on. It was very clean, though. Is there a lesson in all this? Just one of preparedness, I think. I had prepared my sources of information years ago, and practiced using them regularly. I had purchased the scanner after the fire three years ago, and I spent weeks programming it and learning how to use it. And we had carefully thought out what we would take with us in the event of an evacuation. Between all these things, we had enough time to get ourselves, our animals, and our really important possessions out of harm’s way. I shudder to think what it would have been like had we been completely unprepared, and had had to evacuate with just minutes of notice. Many, many people did exactly that, escaping with (quite literally) just the clothes on their backs. I wouldn’t like to evacuate in that manner... About 18 months ago, I set out to build a fireproof building (nicknamed “The Fortress”) to shelter the possessions we couldn’t replace, including my slide rule collection. This is really the perfect answer to someone crazy enough to live in the chaparral. With the help of an engineer experienced in the design of fire proof buildings, I designed a concrete/reinforced steel building. As I write this, the building’s foundation and walls are completed -- but it has no roof. The contractor I engaged to build it walked away from the job, leaving me in the lurch -- without either the completed building or much of the money I had to get it built. That contractor, as you might imagine, is not on my list of favorite people. I’m hoping to be able to afford to finish that building this spring, before next year’s fire season. I’m also hoping that next year’s fire season won’t be so bad, because it’s looking like we could be having the wettest year in seven or eight years. We’ve been in a prolonged drought, which greatly increases the risk of wildfires; this year may well be a relatively low risk year. If I do manage to get that building finished this year, I’m going to permanently house my slide rule collection in there, in dust-proof cabinets. Then I can finally stop worrying about fire destroying my collection! The Fortress