When is a line not a line? When it’s a series of tiny dots, of course! The line is actually tiny, laser-etched craters, 0.25 mm center-to-center. That’s the technique [Ed Nisley] used to create a ...

In the grand scheme of things, it really wasn’t all that long ago that a slide rule was part of an engineer’s every day equipment. Long before electronic calculators came along, a couple of sticks of ...

Before there were apps for tablets and smartphones, before mathematics education software was easily installed on personal computers, before electronic calculators entered professional practice and ...

Used by engineers for centuries, they were displaced by pocket calculators and all but forgotten until Mr. Shawlee created a subculture of obsessives and cornered the market. By Alex Traub For about ...

For about 350 years, humanity’s most innovative handheld computer was something called a slide rule. As typewriters once symbolized the writer, slide rules symbolized the engineer. These analog ...