Why are there no slide rules in this movie? It kind of bugged me when Katherine was solving trigonometric equations in front of Glenn and Pentagon bigwigs without using any reference books or slide rules. For me, this did not hold a mirror up to nature; it seemed totally unrealistic.
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You want thingamabobs? I got twenty!
I was thinking the same thing. I remember seeing them used in the movie Apollo 13 and wondered why none of the characters in this film were using them.
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Perhaps no slide rules, but they did have Frieden calculation machines. I am of an age to remember having Frieden's in our staff room (circa 1976)
Trivia Question: Name the Academy Award best picture winning movie where a Frieden calculating machine was prominently featured ???
~~the coins in the jar are for charity,~~
~~the coins in the tray are for sharing~~
A Frieden wouldn't have replaced a slide rule maybe an HP in the late 60s
shareAgreed, you can't do logarithmic or trig functions on a calculating machine. I used a Monroe in the 60s which is very similar.
And to answer the previous poster, it's The Apartment. THese calculating machines were very common in insurance offices, but again, only to add, subtract, multiply or divide.
answer...The Apartment
No such movie. Though Jack Lemmon used a Friden calculator in "The Apartment." (I know I got beat, but I thought I'd correct the spelling as a consolation)
shareWhy are there no slide rules in this movie?There is another thread asking why there was no smoking in the film.
slide rules are so out of style that most viewers wouldn't recognize them. Even viewers old enough to recognize them,
Yup - anyone under age 60 probably wouldn't know what they are
ok..that line isn't true...i'm 52...and i know what it is....i checked for my dad's..and it's still in the desk....i refuse to get rid of it...
mind you i've never used one, never had to, but hey at least i know what it is...
so don't say anyone under the age of 60...50 yes...but not 60
susan
not too sure when my dad got his calcular...but my mom still uses it...and it's i believe from teh 70's....
and i think that he gave me and my sister texas ones, when we were about 12...she just turned 50....
but those didn't last that long......not like some of the ones that they made....like the one that my mom still has of my dad's....
it got a new battery...but, that was what 40 years later......
my dad is no longer with us...but, still
susan
I'm sorry that your dad has passed. I'm 56 and I had a several slide rules through grade school and high school. They were plastic and not the most precise instruments but at the time it was cool, before digital watches and calculators. The ones I had didn't have the precision to get us to the moon but I think that it contributed to my wanting to became an engineer.
I have a very low tolerance for stupid so if I ignore you it's nothing personal.
my dad's job was just below an engineer...
so yes...
thank you
susan
I was a college freshman in 1976 and my chemistry professor made us use slide rulers. There were "pocket calculators" available by then (I had a Bomar Brain!) but ones that did log functions generally cost ~$100 and he didn't want to require everyone to buy one and it wasn't fair to have some use electronic calculators while others had to use slide rulers.
That was probably the last time I used one.
Sadly in the 50's and 60's an engineer would not have been caught dead without his slide rule. Some even had holsters so they could wear them like pistols *laughs* They were the equivalent of the pocket scientific calculator of today.
I own and can use several slide rules but some of the ones of that time were truly impressive.
In 1965 the scientific desktop calculators started to appear and then after time the HP 9100A in 1968.
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With the kind of accuracy they would often need, and considering that a slide rule is really only good for 2 or 3 significant digits, I would expect a place like NASA to be using a lot of mechanical calculators in the early 1960s. Desktop models, most likely. But I'd like to see a movie - ANY movie - sometime, from that period, where someone was using a Curta. They were available at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta
I bought a couple of them at a university surplus auction, in the early 80s as I recall, for about $50. Man, oh man, do I wish I still had them now! I'd keep one, and sell the second on ebay for enough to buy a car!
I had a slide rule in HS and I am sure I still have it buried in a box somewhere. I was in heaven when my Mom bought me a Commodore Minuteman electronic calculator. I loved that calculator.
I had to purchase a TI graphing calculator for night school a few years ago and still have that. If the engineers could only know how their efforts in putting a man on the moon would still change the world, even after the landings.
. Some even had holsters so they could wear them like pistols *laughs* They were the equivalent of the pocket scientific calculator of today.
never thougth of that...but my dad's is in a leather case....
showing [smoking] can be distracting to viewers.
Similarly, slide rules are so out of style that most viewers wouldn't recognize them.
Similarly, slide rules are so out of style that most viewers wouldn't recognize them
i'll have to check...but i believe that i kept my dad's.....
susan
Similarly, slide rules are so out of style that most viewers wouldn't recognize them.Well, most viewers wouldn't recognize the Friden calculators, either. (Too bad the movie didn't show them in full division mode--kachunk! kachung! ding! kachunk!...) I suppose that, in some period films, viewers would be able to figure out what's happening when a character hand-cranks a strange-looking telephone and and asks the operator for some number. Those who don't immediately grasp the purpose of a device would become educated...
Also Alas: The End is Near! IMDB is killing its Message Boards. Despite the many trolls and racists I have encountered here, I find the Boards to be the IMDB feature I find most useful. I certainly won't be coming here often...Back during the Golden Age of the old USENET newsgroups, comments seemed very ephemeral. Most sites only kept messages for weeks, maybe even days.
IMDB is killing its Message Boards.that is a STUPID idea. The web traffic here is going to nosedive after they do that.
There are the reasons they give, including in the "announcement" at the tops of the pages now. But whether those are the REAL reasons or not, is anyone's guess.
http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000042/threads/
Nope, the first archive was Deja News, I forget who ran it.
Here is pic of Spencer's archive: https://ianmilligan.ca/2013/03/06/exploring-the-usenet-archive-early-thoughts/. Would fit on a 8GB flash drive today.
I bet some script is crawling the IMDB boards right now and archiving it.
One explanation I've heard of the value of things like the Curta calculators I've mentioned, with 10 or more digits of accuracy, used in conjunction with large books of trig values etc, was that you could build hundreds and even thousands of miles of highways/freeways where the on-ramps and off-ramps didn't come up a couple feet short or in the wrong direction or something.
shareI forgot to mention the Curta calculators earlier. There's an Isaac Asimov story, "The Theory of Power," that takes place in a future in which humanity is completely dependent on computers to do all calculations. One person has discovered that, for instance, 7 times 3 comes to 21 every time (he's checked it many times with his computer); he memorizes a bunch of sums, and, by using these memories and writing his calculations down in a certain way, he is able to multiply numbers using merely a pencil and paper, a technique he calls "graphitics." Everyone is amazed.
It's a cute story, but what struck me at the time is that all the personal computers that all the characters carry around involve sliders and cranks--obviously, I think, Curtas.
Yeah, some of that old Asimov stuff was amazingly.... Ludditic? As was the man himself, apparently. I remember at one point he was shown a small sliderule-sized TRS-80 "portable" computer from Radio Shack that was really pretty much just a programmable calculator. And Asimov declared that it was, in fact, exactly the kind of thing he had in mind that his characters in the Foundation books used. What nonsense!
And how, exactly, were the "computers" supposed to even WORK, if 7 x 3 WASN'T 21 EVERY TIME, or whatever?
I remember an article about Tandy giving Asimov an early model of the Tandy Radio Shack computer, the TRS-80. IIRC, this was circa 1979 -- anyhow early, the year it came out, years before the first IBMPC was manufactured.
The article describes some geek sitting down with him, to teach him how to replace his beloved IBM Selectric typewriter with a program called "electric pencil".
I recall my impression that Asimov clearly hated this experiment.
I can easily understand that. He typed at 90 words per minute -- as fast as most people can speak. And the keyboards of those Selectrics had terrific ergonomics.
I never used the TRS-80's "electric pencil". But I remember the old Commodore computers, not the PET, the next model, having the worst keyboards I have ever used.
When Asimov was asked what he would do if he knew he only had six months left to live he said, "type faster".
Computer keyboards back then, even the "real" ones rather than the "Chiclet" type etc, had basically no tactile feedback. And most modern keyboards are the same. That's one of the things IBM got right with their early PC and later PS/2 keyboards, the "clicky" ones. And it's the reason why many people, especially professional writers etc, seek out the new keyboards made with real switches.
share"Similarly, slide rules are so out of style that most viewers wouldn't recognize them"
Most people probably don't recognize room-sized mainframes and punch cards, either.
"Smoking in films has fallen out of style, so showing it can be distracting to viewers."
I suppose it can be, but it can also be used artfully as in "Good Night and Good Luck". There was so much cigarette smoke swirling around that movie I came out with a cough!
Actually, I think Dorothy grabs one along with her files on the way to the bathroom in one scene, but I could be wrong. It was very fleeting
shareOn a second viewing of the film, that thought about the lack of slide rules also occurred to me as well.
Did you also notice that Paul Stafford was redacting text on pages that had computer printer pin-feed holes on the side? The pages were 17" X 11" and bursted into separate sheets and folded over to 8.5" X 11" to fit in a binder? They had not installed the computer and computer printer at that point in the film, so where did that paper come from or why were they using computer paper when there's no computer yet?
Did you also notice that Paul Stafford was redacting text on pages that had computer printer pin-feed holes on the side? The pages were 17" X 11" and bursted into separate sheets and folded over to 8.5" X 11" to fit in a binder? They had not installed the computer and computer printer at that point in the film, so where did that paper come from or why were they using computer paper when there's no computer yet?
lol..you're always going to find descrepances..(sp) on a movir or a tv series......always....
Most of the discrepancies, anachronisms, continuity errors are already listed in the Goofs section.
shareGreat point, achun! I didn't even think about that.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.
No cigarettes or slide rules. But lots of gum. Kevin Costern's character alone was keeping Wrigley in business.
shareIn case you didn't notice, this movie was poorly researched, even fraudulent.
How the hell can you have a movie set in the 60's and NOT show people smoking? If the MPAA is against showing smoking in movies, they need to find better things to worry about. No one thinks smoking is cool anymore. It's not a big deal, especially if you can show Bond killing numerous people in a film of the same rating!
How the hell can you have a movie set in the 60's and NOT show people smoking?Dozens of people have answered this question, in this and related threads. You criticize the film for poor research, and you can't be bothered to see if your question has already been answered?
I agree that the choice not to show smoking was reasonable. But I also think the movie missed a teachable moment, and ended up unhelpfully idealizing the main characters -- if any of them actually smoked in the sixties.
All three of them were basically flawless, by today's standards. As such, I feel I have less in common with them than I might if they had been portrayed as more human -- not being able to do trig in their heads, smoking, etc. In my opinion, portraying them as human and flawed would have made them much more powerful as examples and role models.
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You want thingamabobs? I got twenty!
In another thread someone criticized the portrayal of Costner's character Harris(?) personally tearing down the "colored washroom" sign himself, with his own crowbar. I explained that I thought, at some point, a senior manager quietly wrote a memo, and building maintenance took down the signs, probably on a weekend. I explained that i was willing to forgive this more dramatic scene, because: (1) Even if the signs disappeared over a long weekend, it would still be a very dramatic change to those involved; (2) The movie is aimed at a mass audience, including foreigners who know nothing about the civil rights movement, and Americans who know nothing, because they are too young, or sheltered, or just not that bright. Portraying the change with someone writing a historically accurate memo, would risk a key detail sailing right over the heads of a large fraction of the audience.
I don't think teachable moments were their sole priority. Pleasing a mass audience, that included foreigners, was a high priority.
You're a freaking Nazi. So you think it's all right to revise historical movies because of the health issues related to smoking?
This really is the dumbest generation ever. Unreal. You are strong proof the education system needs a complete overhaul, and in some way, I hope Trump does something about that.
You're a freaking Nazi.How many Nazis can you name?
So you think it's all right to revise historical movies because of the health issues related to smoking?Jeez Louise! Here you are whining about the failures of the educational system, and you couldn't even manage to read what I wrote! You better go back and enroll in night school.
You do know you're retarded, right? Not sure if anyone has broken the news to you yet.
And I seriously mean it, you are retarded.