Remembering the Slide Rule

This came up as a thread in the “Off-Topic Observatory” of the Cloudy Nights discussion board for amateur astronomers. People have all kinds of hobbies and among the stargazers are skiers, rally racers, runners, and rock climbers, though understandably many more bird watchers, radio hams, and numismatists. Several of us collected slide rules accidentally or on purpose. In response to the topic, one poster just bought a circular slide rule to add to the collection. Aside from the engineer’s slipstick, my circular calculators are all for publishing to reduce or enlarge images and paper pages. 

 

Calculators - and I do use my phone, holding it sideways for the technical functions - give us a false sense of precision, when all you need is accuracy. In other words: will it fly? will it overflow the container? will it carry the load? For backyard stargazing, given that the atmosphere is a roiling ocean, what is the (approximate) limit of observable stellar magnitude with a 115 mm versus 102 mm refractor? The difference between pi=22/7 and pi=3.141 is 0.0018: two thousandths. Not much in life is that close. 

The one at the bottom was special because about 1988 or so, Pickett
(or their inheritors) found a large number of them in a warehouse
and in a publication (Scientific American or Science News or similar)
announced that they would give one (one) to everyone who
sent in a letter asking for one. (Email was not common back then),
after which, the instruments would be no longer available.
The one down from topmost came in a leather scabbard
with a fastener on the back so that you could wear it on your belt.
Long after those days, I wore it in to work.
"What's that?"
"This is the formal computing device of a Jedi,
from a simpler, more elegant time."

Clearly, the slide rule has been eclipsed by devices with storage and memory. Back in the 70s, I joined a round-robin newsletter called The Libertarian Connection, which was based on the medium known to science fiction fanzines. We sent in mimeograph stencils; the editors ran them off, collated the magazine, and mailed it out. Back when one ounce first class was 3 cents the saying was “a penny a day from coast to coast.” Then they went to photo-offset, which I enjoyed immensely. And here we are in the age of George Jetson, with a somewhat better BBS via integrated fiber optics into the house instead of a telephone dial-up at 300 baud. 

 The device is based on logarithms which allowed the transformation of multiplication and division into addition and subtraction. With a five-place or six-place tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions, you could achieve 100 times the precision of daily life. (Consider common retail pricing, for example.) That, in turn, allows efficiencies in engineering and production. Compared against working with tables, the slide rule traded speed for precision. You only get three places, but it is much easier, with the likelihood of errors reduced. If you need more precision, there were the books of tables, and an adding machine, then, later a comptometer.

The slide rule shows ratios and proportions so that you do not need to recursively enter numbers 4.1, 4.2, 4.3,… And it is designed to address basic problems involving circles and square roots. 

 

Even in the 1990s, engineers had AutoCAD and its competitors that let you draw something and the program would show the calculations off to the side. Would you rather start a fire with a BiC lighter or two sticks? Still, it is nice to get away from the computer, sit on a couch or chair, and move the numbers and see what is under the cursor or at the index

 

23 squared times Pi.
Set the Index to 23 on the D scale and
read the square at the Index on the A scale.
Set the cursor to Pi on the B scale and read the answer on the A scale.

For the telescope of diameter 115 mm, set the index on the D scale, read the square on the A scale and then set the cursor to pi, and you get 417 or close to. The calculator says 41,547.562843725015579. Ignoring all the noise, 415 is within half a percent. The 102-mm refractor has an area of about 327. Set either the AB or CD scales to 415/327 and the larger telescope has 127% the area of the smaller—and the calculator agrees: 1.27114… But you could do most that in your head anyway. 

In astronomy, the paradigm shifts in understanding the so-called “expansion of the universe” i.e., the Hubble Constant has been measured in orders of magnitude, not decimal places. 

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Claude M. Watson (1922-2013) 

The Rational Optimist and The Grand Complication 

Celestial Mechanics 

Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirshfeld’s Astronomy Activity Manual 

Mistakes Happen: VAM Varieties (U.S. Silver Dollars According to Van Allen and Mallis)

This is why coin collectors want electron microscopes. You see, the Mint was forced to strike millions of these, just to consume silver. The price of silver had collapsed because of the Comstock Load of Nevada which brought more new silver into the world than existed at that time. Mining interests found a supporter in U.S. Senator Richard P. "Silver Dick" Bland.

Over on the CoinTalk.com discussion board, the topic of lenses came up once again. I replied with an allusion to a friend who pursues VAMs. Another regular poster commented on my answer.

Alegandron said: 

Still, our Ancients questions seem to always be answered from the perspective of Modern Coins and their acronyms viewpoints...

(His avatar caption is a tribute to Alexander the Great)

I replied: Yes, my apologies. I thought about that... (If anything, I am an ancients guy. I have not done much with U.S.). You probably googled it. VAM: Van Allen and Mallis for their cataloguing of every Mint error in a useless but big and shiny and (I admit) nicely designed coin. (The Morgan Dollar. The Peace Dollar has a nice obverse, but the Reverse was the botched work of an angry and aged George Morgan.)

Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia
of Morgan and Peace Dollars
by Leroy C Van Allen; and A George Mallis
(many editions 1976 to present)

“As a way to appease miners in the West and other silver supporters, the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 ordered the Treasury to buy $2 million to $4 million in silver from the miners each month. The bill was also a way by some congressmen to return the United States to bimetallism. Twelve years later, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act followed, with similar intent, requiring the United States government to buy an additional 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion every month. However, the government could do so with gold notes, which was driving silver out of circulation.” – “Crime of '73” at the US Mint here:  https://www.usmint.gov/news/inside-the-mint/mint-history-crime-of-1873

At that level of production, quality control as we understand it today was impossible. Errors were common. Most of them were simply the result of daily work. If a numeral of a date did not seem sharp enough, the die was repunched to bring it out more. With our magnifiers today, we can tell. Overpunched Mintmarks (O over CC ) were the result of dies intended originally for Carson City being sent to New Orleans. Die clashes happened when a coin blank was not injected into the dies and they struck each other. Subsequent coins would show evidence of the opposing patterns. 

Die doubling is a consequence of how working dies are made from masters. The master is pressed into the working die several times (typically three). The forces required result in hardening of the working die. So, it is annealed (softened) with heat. The master is reapplied. If the master does not re-align with microscopic precision some of the image will be doubled, like a visual “echo” of a line or edge of a device (Eagle’s feather; Miss Liberty’s hair), numeral, or letter. Again, some collectors pursue those with magnifiers, loupes, and microscopes.

In wider numismatics, such detailed examinations can show if dies were transported from one place to another, especially if we have other reasons to believe that they were. In the ancient Greek world c 500-100 BCE, celators (die cutters) were in demand as perhaps a thousand independent cities issued their own coinages. 

American numismatics has a different motive. We have less history. So, many advanced collectors focus on small details within issues. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Money as a Crusoe Concept 

Money as Living History 

To Make Money 

The Art of Finance 

  

Whitman’s Coin Collecting Quantum Crossover

Question: What do you get when you cross a Red Book with a Whitman Folder?

Answer: A Search and Save book dedicated to the new collector.

Well known traditional support for collectors. 

Whitman Publishing is the leading producer of products for coin collectors. This year, they released a new entry in the marketplace, their Search and Save booklets.  They will open the doors to numismatics for another generation of numismatists – young and mature alike.  

New products for new generations.

 The median age in coin collecting is about 58, and has been for decades. These numismatists began as kids, often with paper routes.  If you could set aside a nickel worth eight cents you made a 60% profit from your knowledge. When inflation of the 1960s and 70s destroyed circulating coinage, the thrill of collecting from pocket change disappeared along with silver coins… and Buffalo Nickels, and Indianhead Cents.  But the rewards can be found again in two new series from the US Mint celebrating the 50 states (1999-2009) and their “America the Beautiful” national parks (2010-Present).  In addition, two series of dollar coins can be had: Presidents and Native Americans.  

Historical narratives that are richer than
the brief paragraphs in the Red Book.

These Whitman products deliver the structure to collecting that can draw the new numismatist.

All federal money is legal tender.  A Jefferson nickel from 1938 is just as spendable as one from 2008. And you can find those 1938 5-cent coins in circulation if you look at your change. The new collector will eventually go to a coin store to find a silver 5-cent coin from 1942 to 1945.  But that decision can be made later.  In the mean time, five different Jefferson Nickels are easy to find in circulation, as are eight different Lincoln cents (four others will be inexpensive at a coin store).

How to hold (and not hold) a coin.
This illustration is in all Search and Save books.

Literature is the key to value. Collectors who think that they are smart will chase this coin or that, but their greed begs a question: How did they know that the coin was worth pursuing?  The fact is that they were told (often second-hand) by researchers who published articles in numismatic magazines.  A scant few aficiandos read those.  Then the facts made their way into books.  Some few more touts and buffs found out about the rarities and values. They hit on dealers to see who had what in stock. Eventually word got out.  We find it unusual today, but in the 1930s, a US $3 Gold sold for a margin over bullion spot: they were not regarded as rare. A hundred years ago, no one cared about mint marks.  In our lifetime, repunched dates and repunched mint marks have joined doubled dies as the rewards for searching your pocket change.

The 50 State Quarter book only has 11 spaces to fill,
one from each year of issue. Pick your favorite coin.

Now, these Whitman products combine the tree-top view of literature with an attainable goal for novice collectors.  You can find 50 State Quarter coins in change. You can fill this book with eleven of them: you do not need all 150 (50 states, 3 mints). Keep your eyes open because nice lightly circulated examples are still out there.  The same applies to Jefferson Nickels and Lincoln Cents.  

These tools support "type collecting." Rather than one coin from each Mint from each year of issue, you only need to find one of each type, regardless of year or Mint.

Former ANA President and former Krause Corporation president Clifford Mishler had a stump speech that he delivered at conventions.  Collectors are a type of person, he said.  He called it “a gene you do not inherit.” The children of collectors may not be collectors: it is a small tragedy that we know. The grandchildren just want the money from the coins: they do not care about the coins. But we do. And some of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may well, also.  These Whitman products can open the doors to coin collecting, the most popular hobby in the world.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Whitman Publishing: Fact and Value in Numismatics 

Numismatics Informs Economics 

Numismatics: History as Market 

Debt: the Seed of Civilization  

Meteorites

You can own meteorites, the remaining pieces of the early solar system.  They are swept up by the Earth in its orbit, and survive the long fall to Earth's surface.  Some can be identified as coming from Mars, others from Luna.  Some are fragments of comets.  Most are relics of shattered planetoids.

For our ancestors, meteorites were at once harbingers of the gods, and the most ready form of iron.  We know now that some contain amino acids – the building blocks of life – and some of those are not known in native form on Earth. 

The popular beginner's book
by "fallen star" Richard Norton

You can find reputable dealers for buying and selling. If you have the opportunity for travel, you can find your own craters and fall sites and strewn fields. Rarely, but possibly, you can find a meteorite by paying close attention to the ground beneath your feet. Whatever your interest and resources, you can assemble your own museum.

First the Bad News

A New York Times article for April 4, 2011, called them “Black Market Trinkets from Space.”

“…chunks of meteorites, bits of asteroids that have fallen from the sky and are as prized by scientists as they are by collectors. As more meteorites have been discovered in recent years, interest in them has flourished and an illegal sales market has boomed — much to the dismay of the people who want to study them and the countries that consider them national treasures.

“It’s a black market,” said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in Antarctica. “It’s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.”

 

Paperback 288 pages
University of Arizona Press, 1997.

The trend is for modern governments such as Turkey, Egypt, and Libya, to sue other modern governments such as the United Kingdom and the Unites States of America, for the return of “cultural patrimony”. 

By comparison, in numismatics, dealers and collectors often find  themselves standing against the interests of museums, especially those operated by governments. The Ancient Coin Collectors’ Guild was formed to lobby Congress, and to sue in courts for the rights of collectors.  And it is not just about coins.  Coins do signal to metal detectors, but they are only the most common artifacts of any Western civilization since 500 BCE.  Where you find coins, you find oil lamps, amphoras, and other ceramic household goods.

Patrimonial claims open many doors. The American Museum of Natural History was sued by a Native American council that claimed that the Willamette Meteorite was sent by the gods to communicate with their people before the arrival of other people on this continent.

New York, New York - June 22, 2000 -- The American Museum of Natural History and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon today signed a historic agreement that ensures access to the Willamette Meteorite, a world famous scientific specimen at the Museum, by the Grand Ronde for religious, historical, and cultural purposes while maintaining its continued presence at the Museum for scientific and educational purposes. The agreement recognizes the Museum's tradition of displaying and studying the Meteorite for almost a century, while also enabling the Grand Ronde to re-establish its relationship with the Meteorite with an annual ceremonial visit to the Meteorite.  (AMNH Archives here.) 

To my knowledge, no museum curator has spoken up for the numismatists.  However, the New York Times article cited above also included this quote: "We have a co-operative relationship with the collectors," said Monica Grady, a leading meteorite scientist at Britain's Open University. "We can't afford to go out and collect, but this small army of dealers will do it."

In 2012, the federal Bureau of Land Management created three licenses for people who want to hunt for meteorites on federally-held lands. 

•                Casual collection of small quantities without a permit

•                Scientific and educational use by permit under the authority of the Antiquities Act

•                Commercial collection of meteorites through the issuance of land-use permits

(See Space.Com archives here.)

As with any collecting hobby, two axioms inform buyers and sellers alike: 

1. Knowledge is king. 
2. If you don’t know your material, then know your seller.  

Dealers formed the International Meteorite Collectors Association (here). In order to join the club, you must have recommendations from two members.  Their website is not completely clear on what that means, so I emailed an enquiry.  It means that you must have an established buyer-seller relationship with at least two of their members.  

The Meteoritical Society (here) was founded in 1933 by professional and amateur scientists in order to organize the study of meteorites and planets. 

Austin’s Russ Finney created a website to provide information. You can find others online.  Some dealers are members of several societies.  Again looking to numismatics as a reference point, if a dealer is a member of several societies, then that increases their social capital: they have more resources to lose if things go wrong. 

I bought my first meteorite about 20 years ago from an ANA member who advertised them under the “Other Collectibles” heading in the classified ads of The Numismatist. I received two more from a friend who teaches science.  She bought them from a mentor who opened a rocks and minerals store after he retired. 

Personally, I have not done business with any of the firms listed here. I offer them as benchmarks for the size of the hobby network. 

 

http://www.arizonaminerals.com/

http://www.universaltreasures.com/

Aerolite Meteorites

http://www.aerolite.org/ 

(Note that while the site is in the Dot.Org domain, the firm is incorporated as a for-profit enterprise.  The owner, Geoff Notkin, also owns the label as an LLC.  The accounting rules derive from his many activities.

"I am a science writer, meteorite hunter, and photographer, television host and producer, and have had the good fortune to participate in exciting expeditions across much of the world, in search of meteorites and other natural history treasures. I am host the multi award-winning TV adventure series Meteorite Men on the Science Channel and won two Emmys for my work in educational television with STEM Journals. I am a member of The Explorers Club, The International Meteorite Collectors Association, The Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the International Dark-Sky Association, and the Society of Southwestern Writers."

https://www.meteorites-for-sale.com

http://www.meteorite.com

http://www.star-bits.com/index.html

http://outofabluesky.com

http://meteoriteman.com

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Problem of Cultural Patrimony

The Drunken Astronomers

Turn Left at Orion

The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope

Coins and Stamps

"Coin collecting" is properly called "numismatics"; and numismatics encompasses military orders and decorations, merchant tokens, paper currency and banknotes, bank drafts, stock certificates, and much more, including literature about the money objects and the people who made and collected them. So, too, is "stamping collecting" properly called "philatelics" or "philately"; and within the latitudes of philatelics you will find covers ("envelopes"), post cards, cancellations, and literature including the biographies of postmasters, collectors, and dealers.

The Plate Block
 is a set of four near the number
that identifies the printing plate.

Unlike coins and banknotes, stamps were invented as and intended as consumables.  That created an inherent opportunity for new designs.  Interestingly enough, the nation that started postage stamps was perhaps the last to break free of a predictable series, almost entirely of definitives with the ruler's cameo and the value and little else.  

Greece has several series honoring her classical coins.
Left Pythagoras on a coin from Samos. Right Rhodes.

 Postage stamps as we know them today were instituted on May 1, 1840, in the United Kingdom after several years of advocacy by Sir Roland Hill and Robert Wallace (MP), and independent efforts by James Chalmers.  (Wikipedia here.)  

Dominca honors the first stamp.
Israel remembers the Temple shekel of the Bar Kochbar Revolt. 

Also, to the point, while postage stamps do have tendrils in the past, their invention is a recorded event. The first coins are less well attested.  We do know the oldest examples; but we have no clear idea why they were invented. 

Hungary (left) commemorated the guilder of King Laszlo,
one of several in this series.
Monaco remembers
a Double Grosso of Honore the Second
also one of a series.

Like coins, stamps are most often more valuable in "mint state."  However, a mint stamp has no history; and a cancelled stamp does.  With cancellations, we do know the time and place.  Some philatelists pursue cancellations as a speciality.  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Before Email
Philatelics: the objective virtues of stamp collecting
Scripophily
Open Secrets

Philatelics: the objective virtues of stamp collecting

“Those bright little pieces of paper will carry your words across oceans, over mountains, over deserts, and still more difficult: over savage frontiers (the most savage of which are not on the underdeveloped continents). ... Think of the human ingenuity, the technological development, the large-scale synchronization of effort that were required to create a worldwide postal system.”

“While the world politicians are doing their best to split the globe apart by means of iron curtains and brute force, the world postal services are demonstrating...in their quiet, unobtrusive way...what is required to bring mankind closer together: a specific purpose cooperatively carried out, serving individual goals and needs.”

  

“It is the voices of individual men that stamps carry around the globe; it is individual men that need a postal service; kings, dictators and other rulers do not work by mail. In this sense, stamps are the world's ambassadors of good will.”

“The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people...because, in pattern, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world. A career requires the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression toward a goal.”

“The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They are accustomed to working long-range; to them, the present is part of and a means to the future; a short-range event or activity that leads nowhere is an unnatural strain on them, an irritating interruption or a source of painful boredom. Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant, single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train...that is, a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning.  Stamp collecting fulfills that need.”

All quotes are from “Why I Like Stamp Collecting,” by Ayn Rand, Minkus Stamp Journal, 1971. You can find the Minkus article archived at several sites, among them, Kenmore Stamp here.

On December 11, 2013, the U.S. Postal Service honored Ayn Rand with an essay in the series "How they Collected."

The hobby is called “philatelics” or “philately.” Phil<love of. A<not. Tela<tally, count, tax: The stamp shows that the tax or fare has been paid.  Rand’s comments apply to many, perhaps most, collecting interests, certainly to numismatics.  The same sort of moral arguments could be made for collecting pens and writing instruments, watches, or antique tools.  Ultimately, the moral context comes not from the object, but from the person who pursues it.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Art of Finance
Scripophily
Money as Living History
Numismatics: History as Market