Before Pocket Calculators

Before there were pocket calculators there were nuclear-age slide rules. These circular cardboard calculators, shown on the Oak Ridge Associated Universities Web site , measure all kinds of things related to nuclear blasts -- and, presumably, government officials needed dozens of special slide rules to measure them.

Among the nearly three dozen nuclear-age slide rules , there's the Radiation Dosage Calculator and the BRL Nuclear Weapon Effects Computer. There's also the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer (EG&G), which obviously needed an upgrade to the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer (Revised Edition). There's also the Snow Obstetrical Calculator, which I'm pretty sure I don't want to know what it was used for.

My favorite, not for what it measured, but for the editorial comment the Oak Ridge boys added to their explanation: The M1A1 RADIAC Calculator, according to the Web site, "estimates the dose to personnel who are in the area [of radioactivity] at specified periods of time after the [nuclear] explosion. The back of the slide rule has the (none too clear) instructions." That could have been a problem.

Hat tip: boingboing