In 1990, just before he retired from his job as a geologist, mining engineer and oil company executive Tom Wyman recalls sitting across his desk from a “sharp MBA” to discuss a project. Wanting to check a couple of numbers, Wyman reached into his drawer and pulled out a slide rule. Amazed, the MBA said, “My goodness, you’ve got one of those wooden calculating sticks!”
In fact, Wyman, ’49, MS ’51, had more than one. He began collecting slide rules—which for more than three centuries were used by engineers, bankers, tax collectors and others to perform computations—in 1946, and now owns 700 to 800 in all. They were produced as long ago as 1693 and as recently as the early ’70s, when the advent of the pocket calculator curtailed their popularity. The largest, a classroom model, stretches eight feet long, and the smallest are slide-rule pencils and tie clips.
Wyman bought his first collector’s slide rule in Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II. The unique cylindrical model was likely used for marine navigation. “It appears to be a European model adapted by the Japanese for their own purposes,” he says. “I’m still working trying to find out how it was used.” However, he can—and does—use most of his slide rules; they’re particularly handy for calculating ratios like miles per gallon.
For Wyman, “there’s a fascination with the instrument itself and what it does, but also how it was used by people in the past and how they developed slide rules for their particular needs.” He believes slide rules aid in the development of numerical literacy, or “numeracy,” because they let you follow the calculation mentally and see if the result makes sense.
LAURA SHIN is Class of ’97.
