Hobbies And Interests
Traditional Slide Rules
According to slide rule enthusiasts Eric Marcotte and Ron Manley, no one appears to be making the traditional ruler-shaped slide rules anymore. If you want to get your hands on a "new" one, they recommend searching eBay for unused slide rules still in their original packaging. Ron Manley tracks monthly eBay prices on his slide rule website and offers tips on timing your bids.
Circular Slide Rules
Eric Marcotte says that the closest new products you'll find to the classic slide rule are all made by Concise Company Limited. Concise, a Japanese manufacturer, offer a diverse catalog of circular slide rules which, like traditional slide rules, enable standard computations such as multiplication, division, proportion, square roots and cubic roots. More complex models perform trigonometric and logarithmic functions. They make models for both Japanese and English use.
Time and Date Calculators
The sliding or rotating card calculator design can also enable time and date functions. Concise makes several models along these lines. One model facilitates time zone comparisons while others help you find the day of the week for any date between 1901 and 2018. Alcott Calculator Company makes a date forecaster which makes it easy to divide a project timeline into days and weeks.
Aviation Computers
One category of modern slide-rule-style devices enables calculations essential to planning and navigating flights. A popular example is ASA's E6-B Flight Computer. Inexpensive and available through most pilot supply distributors, the E6-B combines both the circular and the straight-edge styles of slide rule. Its circular scales perform simple calculations for such concerns as fuel consumption, flight duration, air speed, density altitude and conversions between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Its sliding component enables wind correction and vectoring computations.
Concise makes several flight computer models as well. Its AN-1 and AN-2 models perform a comparative range of functions to the E6-B, and the TANC-3 models offer additional calculations.
International manufacturer IWA ("Information tools, Working aids, Advertising carriers") also makes an aviation calculator similar to the E6-B. Their IWA-11092 uses a "new scale arrangement" which the comany says simplifies many basic calculations such that they can be performed with a single adjustment.
Industry-specific Slide Charts
Many modern slide rule style devices serve purposes particular to trades, professions and industries. Examples in Concise's catalog include metal weight calculation, manufacturing times and stadia surveying. Concise also make a slide rule specifically for timing intravenous drips, and another for checking how you rate on the Body Mass Index (BMI). M H Mear &Company offer circular calculators for heating, air conditioning, flow, weight and electric lighting. Alcott Calculator Company make circular slide charts specific to the steel industry. IWA make sliding calculators for the air conditioning, plumbing, electrical and medical industries.
Slide Charts Made to Order
Some manufacturers, among them Datalizer Slide Charts, Inc. and American Slide Chart/Perrygraf, will design custom slide rules for any customer-provided data set.