Slide Rule: Post Versalog No. 1460

(Click on this and all pictures for a complete full-size view of the slide rule)

Selective Luddite™ that I am, I've long been fascinated with slide rules. I often use them in preference to calculators, and I've acquired something of a slide rule collection over the years. One of my favorites is the Post Versalog No. 1460. It has 23 scales— probably my favorites are the R1 and R2 scales, which afford greater precision in working with squares and square roots than an A scale.


I picked up this slide rule for a song in an antique shop in Decorah, Iowa. I just walked into that shop and there it was, in a glass case along with several other slide rules. A beautiful slide rule, celluloid over bamboo. Think it was something like $16 that I paid for it. Only problem was, the Versalog was missing the little cursor glass on the back side.


So I went to Walter Shawlee's Slide Rule Universe, out in British Columbia, and ordered a spare part from them. They just about flipped when I told them how much I'd gotten the slide rule for. I think the cursor glass was $20, more than I'd paid for the slide rule itself. But $16 + $20 = $36 was still a bargain for a slide rule which sells among collectors for $200 or more.


There's a little date code on the edge of my Post Versalog, indicating that it was manufactured in March 1957. Seven months before Sputnik was launched. March 1957. Dag Hammarskjöld was Secretary General of the United Nations. "Butterfly" by Andy Williams was at the top of the singles charts. Elvis had just bought Graceland. The British colonies of the Gold Coast and British Togoland became the independent nation of Ghana. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss was published. President Eisenhower had just begun his second term in office. And I was a squawling baby, nine months old.