http://www.pmonta.com/2001-01-15T12:00:00-05:00Peter Monta's projects2001-01-15T12:00:00-05:002001-01-15T12:00:00-05:00Peter Montatag:www.pmonta.com,2001-01-15:/printable-otis-king-slide-rule.html

<p>After looking through Dick Lyon's <a class="reference external" href="http://www.svpal.org/~dickel/OK/OtisKing.html">web site</a> devoted to the Otis King cylindrical slide rule, I decided I had to have one, even if only made of paper. So here's a Postscript / PDF version of an Otis King model L—just cut out the pieces, tape them into paper cylinders …</p>

<p>After looking through Dick Lyon's <a class="reference external" href="http://www.svpal.org/~dickel/OK/OtisKing.html">web site</a> devoted to the Otis King cylindrical slide rule, I decided I had to have one, even if only made of paper. So here's a Postscript / PDF version of an Otis King model L—just cut out the pieces, tape them into paper cylinders, assemble, and start calculating.</p> <p>Postscript: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pmonta.com/uploads/2001/01/ok.ps">ok.ps</a> (1.4 MByte)</p> <p>PDF: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pmonta.com/uploads/2001/01/ok.pdf">ok.pdf</a> (0.3 MByte)</p> <p>Source code to produce the Postscript: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pmonta.com/uploads/2001/01/ok.c">ok.c</a></p> <p>After a dozen random multiplications, I seem to be getting around 0.02% rms error, or a little under 4 decimal places accuracy. On stiffer media maybe 0.01% is realistic. Here's the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pmonta.com/uploads/2001/01/trials.py">python script</a> that automates prompting the user with random numbers and calculating the errors.</p> <img alt="complete slide-rule page" src="http://www.pmonta.com/uploads/2001/01/ok.png" style="width: 45%;" /> <img alt="slide-rule detail" src="http://www.pmonta.com/uploads/2001/01/ok-cropped.png" style="width: 45%;" />