More than 50 years ago, the Ohio Alpha chapter of Tau Beta Pi hosted a lesson at the Case Institute of Technology on the usage of a slide rule. For unknown reasons, subsequent years provided increasingly reduced interest in the slide rule, and the lecture was not continued. It is suspected that the pocket calculator may have contributed to this decline. Today, usage of the slide rule has become a 'lost art' of sorts, something reserved only for faculty members and uber-engineers. However, what engineer wouldn't recognize the benefit of knowledge in slide rule usage? You can use it to impress your family, friends, and/or members of the opposite sex. Don't go through math class without it!
Tau Beta Pi last hosted the Slide Rule SatCo in 2004 with the assistance of Professor Thomas Kicher of the EMAE department. The future of the Slide Rule program is up in the air, but we are confident that the next installment of the Slide Rule Saga will reduce the frequency of the program to less than once every fifty years.