Analon Slide Rule

Whenever I do anything even slightly out of the ordinary with magnetics, I must drag out my trusty Analon slipstick to make sure I haven’t lost a dimension.

Go ahead, you verify that the area inside a BH hysteresis curve is proportional to power loss in a given transformer core. I’ll wait…

My recollection is that I bought it in the Lehigh University Bookstore in the early 70s, but that doesn’t square up with the Analon’s history: they should have been out of circulation by then. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it in high school, extreme geek though I was, and it’s for damn sure I wouldn’t have bought one after graduation. Come to think of it, if the LU Bookstore wasn’t among the last bastion of Analon holdouts, where would you look?

Over the decades I’ve penciled in a few handy dimensions they didn’t think of. Unlike most of the 600 597 (plus one in the Smithsonian) Analons in the wild, this one actually gets used, so it’s not New-In-Box (which means you collectors need not suffer from involuntary hip motions). It’s also not as grubby as it looks: I didn’t spend a lot of time futzing with the scans.

Anyway, that’s called beausage and it enhances the value.

Works that way with other antiques, right?

Links:

• Demise of the Slide Rule
• Slide Rule History – some Analon Info
• Analon Manufacturing insider story
• Analon Manufacturing commentary

Yeah, OK, it’s a Slide Rule Gloat…