[Rollei] Obsolete skills (was Why the 6-element lens for 3.5Fs)

["Dan Kalish" <kaliushkin >]

I was using a slide rule in the 6th grade.  I'm sure Jerry, since he also
went to Bronx Science, mastered slide rules.

Closely connected to using a slide rule is:

4. Memorizing pi to oodles of decimal places.  I memorized it to 57 but have
dropped a few with age.  This is useless because to know the volume of the
universe to within the size of a proton, you only need about 30 decimal
places.

Pi is, approximately, 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288...

AFAIK, pi has been expanded to 60 billion decimal places.

<g>

Dan K.

>
> Date: Sat, 03 May 2003 02:18:22 -0400
> From: TrueBadger  
> Subject: Re: [Rollei] Re: Why the 6-element lens for 3.5Fs
> Message-ID: <54031EB9.4141B4AF.0D16C13D  >
> References:
>
> > > Richard Knoppow wrote:
>
> > BTW, I am one of the few left who
> > knows how to re-ribbon old RCA and Western Electric mics.
> > Talk about your useless skills :-)

> > Richard Knoppow
> > Los Angeles, CA, USA
>
>
> The list of formerly useful, now useless skills would be an interesting
one to start compiling.
>
> You could add to it:
>
> 1. Knowing how to use a slide rule.
>
> 2. Designing any digital circuit using discrete components.
>
> 3. Knowing how to design core memory.
>
> Regarding many of the once-hot skills of the 20th century, well, you'd do
better knowing how to shoe a horse.
>
> G. King
>

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