The Best Obituary About Slide Rules Geeks You Will Read Today

 Via the New York Times, this delightful* obituary: 

...One day, about 20 years later, a middle-aged avionics engineer by the name of Walter Shawlee was looking through a drawer at his home in Kelowna, a midsize city in British Columbia, when he happened upon his old slide rule from high school.

It was a Keuffel & Esser pocket Deci-Lon, model 68-1130, with a slender Ivorite body and delicate see-through cursor box. Both had stood the test of time. Mr. Shawlee remembered that as a teenager he had spent six months saving up money to buy it.

Mr. Shawlee was not merely a slide-rule sentimentalist in thrall to memories of teenage geekdom. He argued that slide rules had intrinsic appeal for several reasons.

He saw dignity, for example, in their solidity and design. A 1999 Times profile quoted Mr. Shawlee describing slide rules as “the techno-guys’ version of a broadsword.” On his website, The Slide Rule Universe, he contrasted them with digital technology. “In 50 years, the computer you are using to view this webpage will be landfill,” he wrote, “but your trusty slide rule will just be nicely broken in!”

You have to check out his website in all of its 1999 glory. As a weird guy with a weird blog, I love it. RIP Walter Shawlee. 

*yes, I recognize the irony