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The Oughtred Society was founded in 1991 by a group of slide rule collectors and is dedicated to the preservation and history of slide rules and other calculating instruments. Over the past three decades it has evolved to an international organization with members in 20 countries. It is noted for its highly acclaimed Journal of the Oughtred Society, published twice annually. The Society is a non-profit educational organization. Society goals include the dissemination and sharing of information and encouragement for collectors. We are affiliated with organizations in the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy. Our activities are carried out by members who volunteer to do various tasks and projects. Membership is open to anyone. Click "Membership" in the left navigation menu for more information about member activities and benefits.

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The 30th International Meeting of Collectors and Researchers of Slide Rules and other Historic Computing Instruments was a terrific success!


The 2024 Oughtred Society annual meeting was held virtually again this year, and again was held in cooperation with European collectors and enthusiasts. It was hosted by the Dutch Kring group and also included the UKSRC. Attendance averaged over 50 people each day of the two day event, held the last weekend in September, 2024 at a time mutually convenient for both Europeans and Americans. (Somehow a few others from elsewhere around the world also attended, and we were all delighted they stayed up late or got up early to do so!)

Presentations included "your first slide rule" as well as delightful presentations of various collections -- some including extremely rare and interesting items that made everyone wish we could meet in person again soon and get to examine the collections up close -- but that would require travelling thousands of miles from one collection to another! So there are advantages both ways, and many of the presenters were particularly good at giving a virtual journey through their collections.

Slide Charts were one of the topics covered, as well as the history of the word "computer."

Several people were congratulated for their leadership in supporting the history of, and joy of, slide rules and calculating or measuring equipment of all sorts. Leo vander Lucht recieved the 2024 OS Fellowship, and Nico Smallenberg was given the 2024 Oughtred Society Award.

Thank you for attending!

Oughtred Society
Board of Directors

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In Memoriam...


• Robert Colin Adams
  5th January, 1954 – 22nd October, 2024

  Born in Blythe Southern Australia, Bob as he was known to everyone was the partner of Di Pearce who unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Bob was still mourning when early this year he was diagnosed with cancer. He was receiving treatment but was recently hospitalised when vital organs started terminally failing. After bouts of partial recovery Bob’s body finally gave out and he tragically passed away pain-free in Adelaide hospital.

  Before retiring Bob was the Principal Consultant for ElectraNet – a major electricity transmission company providing energy and infrastructure solutions across Australia. Alongside the day job Bob was a member of several prestigious International Standards bodies. His last major contribution was an important new technical standard for ensuring electrical installations were capable of withstanding seismic events. Bob was a Fellow of the Oughtred Society and the foremost expert on the Elektro type of slide rule. They were the focus of his collection, alongside slide rules with hyperbolic functions. Less well known is that Bob had an equally impressive collection of pens – particularly stubby models.

  Bob and Di were cornerstones and stalwarts of the international collecting community. It all started when they attended their first International Meeting (IM) in 2003. From then on, until stopped by COVID, Bob and Di were unmissable attendees of all the annual IM’s and even some national/regional collector meetings. Bob presented his ground-breaking “Elektro Slide Rules: Their Use and Scales” paper at the IM2007. But Bob’s lasting slide rule legacy is the Electronic Archive developed by Rod Lovett in 2021. Early on Bob started cataloguing every specialist slide rule ever made for electrical or electronic engineers. This information, with his paper from 2007, is at the heart of the searchable archive and image gallery available online to all collectors – see: https://osgalleries.org/electronic/index.html .

  I have lost a great collector buddy and a close personal friend. – David Rance, October 23, 2024

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  • OS Fellowship 2023

    At the recent International Meeting (IM2023) the Chairman of the OS Awards Committee, Prof. Karl Kleine, announced that a Fellowship had been awarded to Jacques Perregaux. Later the full story will appear on the OS Awards webpage.
    Jacques Perregaux

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   Two Important New (2022) e-Books!

  • Thanks to Jose G. Fernández collectors can now download free-of-charge English and/or Spanish translations of the important Rechenschieber im Wandel der Zeit (Slide Rules through Time) book published in 2009 by Guus Craenen. This book charts the development and evolution of the slide rule from 1787 to 1905. Click on the image of the front cover to download either of the translations.

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   New (2022) Book:

  • The Oughtred Society is pleased to announce the publication of a new book: " A Closer Look At Mechanical Air Navigation Computers". This 197 page book describes the operation and principals behind these unique historical devices. Many detailed images, drawings and examples are given. Numerous devices are described. Collectors, pilots and others interested in aviation should find this work to be of great interest. Klaus Petzgold, a 30 year chief pilot, flight instructor and teacher, is the author of this fine book. A limited supply of this book is available from the Oughtred Society at a cost of $35 plus $8.50 shipping.

  •  View Bob Otnes’ collection

    

    Memorable collections can be big or small. However, the collection of OS founding member Bob Otnes (1932-2019) was truly legendary. OS volunteers are working hard to record for future reference in the Archive of Collections the many, many items that made up Bob’s collection. It will take a while to complete the work but already a major tranche of the collection can be viewed HERE.

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  • Stempunked!

    Richard Blake has been expanding his efforts to bring an introduction to slide rules program to schools and libraries in his local area. He has posted the presentation file for his educational program online here: https://www.stempunked.com/when-slide-rules-ruled. If you are interested in duplicating his efforts in your local area, click the link under the heading Presentation Materials.

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  • F-C Book Updated

  • After going digital 15 months ago and over 1,000 free downloads it was time for an update. Edition V 8.1 of Peter Holland’s definitive book in English and German on every slide rule made by A.W. Faber and A.W. Faber-Castell is now free to download from here

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  • Find Every Electro!

  • Rod Lovett’s latest search facility makes it easy to access the extensive data on Electro types compiled by Bob Adams over many years. Take a look and find every known specialist Electro and Electronic slide rule – try it out here

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  • The new edition of the Journal of the Oughtred Society is out! (See below for sample page and TOC images!)
    
    

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  • Calling all authors! The Oughtred Society is preparing the 2025 and 2026 Journal issues, and is looking for some good articles! Contact Journal editor Jim Bready with your proposal, and see The Journal of the Oughtred Society web page for more information and to download the JOS Guidelines for Authors.

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    Book review by Michael Konshak:

    Book Review of Volume 1 of the 24+ intended volumes (22 currently available), about each major manufacturer of slide rules. The volumes are available on Amazon ($27.95 per hardback or $19.95 per paperback). A portion of each sale is donated to the ISRM (International Slide Rule Museum). Each volume is ~550 printed pages.

    Reviewer Michael Konshak is a retired mechanical engineer and the curator of the International Slide Rule Museum since 2003. He is preserving the 50- to 100-year-old slide rule manuals in the Slide Rule Instruction Library Series. Michael has been a long-time contributor to the Oughtred Society.

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  • Free On-Line BOOK: The Oughtred Society is proud to announce the publication of LONG-SCALE SLIDE RULES in LIFE-SIZE IMAGES by Otto E. van Poelje, dedicated to the memory of our Oughtred Society fellow collector & long-scale slide rule connoisseur Edwin Chamberlain (18-10-2017)
    

  • Archive of Collections. New Collections added to this Archive. The first collection in this Archive was that of the late Tom Wyman. We now have five collections featured; items from the collections of Paul Tarantolo, Louis Gotlib, Richard Davis, Cliff Frohlich and Thomas Wyman. All the collections continue to grow under the direction and efforts of Clark McCoy, Rod Lovett, Ted Hume and Richard Davis. We invite you to view this new Archive of Collections and consider having us post your collection to the OS website for posterity.

  • The Oughtred Society is proud to publish The Inventor of the CURTA Calculator an autobiography. This book is the story of the remarkable life of the inventor of this ingenious device, how he started in his father's mechanical office machine company in Vienna, eventually running the company himself, designing the Curta and becoming embroiled in WWII as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp and finally the difficulties of setting up full production after the war in Liechtenstein. Additional material written by the late Tom Wyman and Dr. Robert Otnes is included.

  • Pencil Slide Rules: A new publication introduced earlier in the year by the Oughtred Society: Pencil Slide Rules and their Successors, The Calculator Pen and Pentop Computers is a collection of articles that admirably covers this subject! This monograph is authored and edited by one of our Oughtred Society founders, Rodger Shepherd. This publication is now available for sale on our website.

  • JOS DVD is available for sale, containing 26 years of the Journal of the Oughtred Society in PDF format. OS members and non-members(individuals and institutions) may purchase the DVD by going to the Journal page and paying for the disk via Paypal.

  • A Search Facility for the Journal of The Oughtred Society awaits your use.
    (See Journal Search in main menu at left.) This new Search Facility displays high resolution PDFs of Journal articles. You may search by several methods -- author, title, keyword, or for any word that appears in any article, or for all articles in a given year, etc.The search facility was created by Rod Lovett.

  • Request for Articles for the 2025 and 2026 Journals. Be a contributing author and share your knowledge and interests. For ideas and inspiration, read "Yes, You Can Write for the Journal of the Oughtred Society" (82KB pdf).
  • Current Journal of the Oughtred Society
    
    
    Cover                        Table Of Contents           Sample Page
  
  

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last modified February 26, 2025