If you knew your Slippy stick was 12 inches long, it could be used for some dimensional measurements in a pinch. In fact, one of mine, a cheap, plastic model, had a twelve inch ruler etched on the back side. The backside of many had quick reference conversion tables on them to go from one system to another. In addition to the trig functions, many models had log scales on them. This made math calculations simple like the civil engineering (surveying) ones but in the math use you needed to keep remembering that you lost resolution through increasing interpolation error, after each step. The things were only as good as how well you could interpolate between two numbers. In surveying that's about as good as you need. In Math it always needed actual fully written out calculations at some later point in time to be sure of figures beyond the third place.
Then many valves had gauges attached to them and engineers usually had a round slide ruler to make calculations of flow volumes and such based on types of fluid flowing through the piping (the tool was a conversion/calculator) so the PVC answer above could be correct too if the round slipping calculators were called slide rules. Many companies producing the round ones called them that.

Cubman: there was a wonderful sense of achievement using a scabard held slide rule to arrive at answers. If you get a chance, pick one up, learn to manipulate it and do some trig problems. You'd be amazed at what can be done with them. Keeping powers of ten in your head and seeing that many lengthy calculations on a calculator are merely inverses reverted to an original value one could do an engineering problem in three steps to what took calculators six steps to accomplish.

edit addition: Since both tools (rulers and calculators) have advantages and disadvantages that overlap, I find it interesting that one replaced the other and that both haven't survived side by side to have the best tool handy depending on the task at hand.

Fortunately for quiz takers, these two just happened to come back to back today in a Literature Category:

#7. Literature Mixture. Player Godwit asks:
In 1898, more than a decade before the Titanic, Morgan Robertson wrote the novel "Futility", in which the biggest ship ever built hits an iceberg. Incredibly, what was the name of his fictional ship?
Samson
Amazon
Titan
Atlas


#8. Literature Mixture. Player H0lyAerith asks:
Morgan Robertson's novella "Wreck of the Titan" bears many striking similarities to the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Why is this so surprising?
Robertson was illiterate
It was written before Titanic sank
It was published in America not England
White Star Line banned the book


I wonder at the difference in titles of the work in the two questions. It might have been a part of two questions being so similar but which checks of FT's Q dB would not pinpoint. Was "Futility" the title of a compilation of short stories, one of which was 'Wreck of the Titan' which is one way it is presented at Wikipedia but it is also called "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan"? Does anyone have the work on their shelves?

They are one and the same book.

See here.

I read that before I posted because what it said under the author's article, things are slightly different. One way it seems to be a book. In another way it seems to only be a story from the book. From the article about Morgan Robertson, Books and Stories at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Robertson

"Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan" containing:
'The wreck of the Titan'
'The Pirates'
'Beyond the Spectrum'
'In the Valley of the Shadow'

Is the story of John Rowland only in "The Wreck..." or is his character also in "The Pirates"? The article about "Futility, or..." doesn't make that clear. It seems only to refer to "The Wreck..." part, ignoring the other stories.

Back to my question if someone has the book, is "Futility, or..." the title of the book and story, or just the book while the story is titled "The Wreck..."

So this is a case where one person might generate a question in QQ/NQG using one title and another person might generate virtually the same question using the other title?

They are both dealing with similar material, but approaching it from different directions. I don't see them as being the same question, since you actually have to make different cognitive links to get the two answers. One starts with knowing Titanic is involved, one carefully uses the form of the title that doesn't offer that information and asks you to get there. And I like both questions.


Back to the original question - 'Futility' and 'Wreck of the Titan' are alternative titles for the novella. 'Futility' came first, the other was added later on to emphasise the similarities with the Titanic.

http://www.titanic-titanic.com/wreck_of_the_titan_1.shtml

http://www.light-eternal.com/Titan.htm

Thanks for the links. I lived many years in Gloucester Mass and there is a Statue there called The Fisherman's Memorial, dedicated in the twenties. The plaque on it says "They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships 1623-1923." and I wondered if Robertson's "Down to the Sea", published 1905, had any connection. I know Kipling was around Gloucester when he did "Captains Courageeous" in 1897. ("Futility" came out in 1898; re-published under the expanded title in 1912 after the Titanic sank). There seems to have been a wave of nautical themed works.

I appreciate both questions for their construction and presented here their placement next to each other in that quiz as serendipitous, to see how two people made Qs of the same info. And maybe the FT QdB should have shown one (2nd whichever that was) of the author's that a similar question existed only through the inclusion of Robertson's name in each question. One got the question built by not using the second title; it would have been a give away to the answer. But as you point out l_t, it wasn't part of the original title.

Ah that first link is the whole story "Futility, or..." with chapters labeled 1, 2, 3... No sight yet of "The Pirates" so that must be a separate work under the same cover (included possibly at the later re-publishing and renaming?). The second link poses many tantalizing coincidences between Titan and Titanic. It also points out the facts of the "Futility" were changed by the publishers in that 1912 publication with the new title (were they attempting to skirt copyright laws even back then?)

What a small world! My parents went to Gloucester on their honeymoon in 1957, and they have pictures of that very statue. I've always meant to go and see it in person. Someday....

Sue, you'd better not wait until 2057.

Jan, this is one of those times that I wish our boards had a "Like" button.