K&E manufacture their last slide rule

11th July 1976
K&E manufacture their last slide rule

Keuffel and Esser (K&E) were the largest manufacturer of slide rules in the US. On 11th July 1976, K&E stopped production of slide rules. The last one off the production line was presented to the Smithsonian Institution.

A slide rule is a mechanical computing device, or analogue computer, that makes complicated calculations much simpler. Slide rules facilitate calculations such as multiplication, division, exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry.

The invention of the computer and the handheld calculator rendered the slide rule obsolete.

Related information:

Image:

  • Slide Rule used by the crew of Apollo 13, in April 1970.
    Credit: National Air and Space Museum. Images remain the copyright of the original copyright holder. Used under fair use policy for educational purposes only.


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K&E manufacture their last slide rule

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