> The last slide rule manufactured in the US was produced on July 11, 1976
This is bit surprising to me. Does it imply that slide rule production had shifted to other countries, or did it really fall out of fashion so very rapidly? For reference, HP-35 calculator was released only in 1972 (for launch price of $395), and TIs competing SR-50 ("slide rule calculator") in 1974 (at $170). I would expect slide rules to be significantly cheaper and fairly entrenched (especially in colleges etc), so being killed in only few years is remarkable if true.
1976 was about the time that Commodore made scientific calculators cheap (under $100). Around that time, I remember a Faber-Castell slide rule (a typical engineering-grade device with fine engravings and a cursor that was actually perpendicular to the rule) costing about $30 - and that still left you with three-and-a-bit significant figures, an adding machine for sums and the need to use trig tables. That's pretty much when the student market went away, and anyone who was using alide rules and calculators to make money had little trouble justifying an HP or a TI.
Although that date is all over the Internet, I don't believe it and some detailed timelines for individual companies suggest a few years later. [1] [ADDED: As the sibling notes, I'm sure at least cheap slide rules were available perhaps even today. But that date is plausible for "in the US."]
They were killed off pretty quickly though. When I started college in fall on 1975 I got a TI scientific calculator which was somewhere around $100-$200. (It was required.) Prices were in sharp decline. A five function TI calculator was about the same price the year before. A year or two later an older HP model (which were higher-end calculators) was also about the same amount.
Calculators were fairly expensive at first but remember that slide rules weren't useful for adding and for a lot of calculations anyway. [They're not precise enough for everything.] So once engineers, in particular, switched to calculators, there wasn't much of a market for slide rules.
I'm guessing that's a bit of hyperbole, since new sliderules are still available for purchase today. Obviously manufacture of sliderules dropped precipitously, but there's still a niche market for them.
Missed that. Yes, that makes it plausible as Post and K&E had both ceased production by then and, presumably, most of the cheaper plastic ones were either made in Japan or in places like the Soviet Union for domestic use.
This is bit surprising to me. Does it imply that slide rule production had shifted to other countries, or did it really fall out of fashion so very rapidly? For reference, HP-35 calculator was released only in 1972 (for launch price of $395), and TIs competing SR-50 ("slide rule calculator") in 1974 (at $170). I would expect slide rules to be significantly cheaper and fairly entrenched (especially in colleges etc), so being killed in only few years is remarkable if true.