Contents

K&W Slide Rule Help Contents

    K&W Slide Rule (© 1997 Know Where Software) is more than a throw back to the golden days of yesteryear. It is a tool for learning logarithms, exponents, scientific notation and significant fugures. It is also a lot of fun.

    One note of caution: If you are used to hand calculators, you will get far less accurate results with a slide rule. Typically ten inch slide rules (C & D scales) are accurate to a maximum of 3 or 4 significant figures. The K&W Slide Rule, because of the finite number of pixels available on computer monitors, is not even this accurate, perhaps 2 or 3 significant figures. It is impossible to place a tick mark between pixels and thus the answer might be off by one or more pixels. The K&W Slide Rule is designed to be an educational rather than a computational tool.

    The K&W Slide Rule is easy to use and intuitive. If you need help, however, click on a help topic below. If you don't know how to use Help, click on Help in the Menu bar above and then How to Use Help.

K&W Slide Rule

    Quick Tour

    File

    Print

    Exit

    Calculator

    Info

    How To

    No Mouse?


Quick Tour

Quick Tour of The K&W Slide Rule

    A slide rule is composed of 4 parts: the main body, the slide and the handles with an attached cursor or cross hair. The slide and handles are moveable. The cursor moves with the handles. To move, place the mouse cursor over either the slide or one of the handles. Hold down the left mouse button and drag left or right.

    The K&W Slide Rule is patterned after the Keuffel & Esser Model 4097C. It contains 6 scales: A, B, CI, C, D and K. If you are unfamiliar with these scales, click on Info on the menu bar and read Slide Rule Basics. It contains brief tutorials on exponents, logarithms, scientific notation, significant figures and slide rule scales. Alternately, use the How To feature. How To will automatically set the K&W up for you and explain why.

     The menu bar lists 3 items: File, Info and Help. Each contains a sub-menu. You select items by clicking with the left mouse button or holding down the Alt key and typing the underlined letter. A Calculator is also available by clicking on the Calculator command button.

    If you don't have a mouse see No Mouse.


Info

 Information

    Info contains several tutorials on the mathematics needed to understand how slide rules work. Click on Slide Rule Basics. Click on Accuracy for a description of what sort of accuracy you can expect with the K&W.


Help

Getting Help

    Help contains K&W Slide Rule Help. Click on Help or press the <F1>. If you are unfamiliar with Help, click on How to Use Help.

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    Clicking on Help will drop down a sub-menu containing Help, How to Use Help and information About K&W Slide Rule.


How To

    Click on the command button How To (or press <Alt+o>). A box will appear. Select one of the operations then click OK. Another box will appear requesting that you type in one or more values. Click OK to automatically set up the slide rule and see a description of the set up.

    If you do not have a mouse, see No Mouse.


File

File: Printing and Exiting K&W Slide Rule

    To Print a diagram of the slide rule at any time, Click on File then Print. The slide rule as it is seen on the monitor will be printed.

    Click on File then Exit to exit.


No Mouse

    If you don't have a mouse, you can select menu items and command buttons by holding down the <Alt> key and typing the appropriate underlined letter (<Alt+Underlined Letter>). To select a sub-menu item, simply type the underlined letter.

    You can also navigate around the command buttons by using <Tab> and <Shift+Tab>. Note that as you do this, the active command button label is outlined by a dotted rectangle. Then, press Enter.

   To move the slide use the left and right arrows. Up will move the cursor right; down will move it to the left. For faster motion, hold down the control (<Ctrl>) key and then press the arrow keys. Home will center both cursor and slide.


Installation

Program Set Up

    Installation of K&W Slide Rule is easy. There are several ways to do this:

    1)From the original disk, simply place it in the appropriate drive. Windows 3.1: From Windows' File or Program Manager, click on File then Run and type a:setup or b:setup. Windows95: Click on Start then Run and type a:setup or b:setup. Setup will take over and install the program.

    2) If you have already used setup or if the files were sent to you without a setup.exe file, simply copy the three files sldrule.exe, sldrule.wri and sldrule.hlp to a directory of your choosing. Normally this would be c:\sldrule. The Microsoft run time file VBRUN300.DLL is also needed to run the K&W Slide Rule and it should be copied to the windows/system sub-directory. If you obtained K&W Slide Rule without VBRUN300.DLL, you can download from any on line service such as America On Line. Otherwise, it is available free from Microsoft.

   3) The CD version of K&W Slide Rule can be run it directly from the CD or you may copy it to your hard drive. Follow the directions in 2) above. Usually running from the hard drive is faster.


Calculator

        The Calculator allows you to perform simple calculations including finding the log and anti-log of numbers. You may type in the numbers or use the numbered buttons provided. Enter operations using the keys provided. A unary operation is completed by clicking a unary operation button (e.g., cos, sqr, log, etc.). Binary operations (+, -, x and /) are completed with the equals sign (=).