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Go ahead, Charles 
Yep, they were still using slide rules when I joined the Royal Navy in 1959 (No that is not a mistake!)
The first computers I wrote about, as a technical author in 1969, was the "Energy Management Analogue Computer" (EMAC) and the "Crosswind Control Computer" for the USAF -- C5A Galaxy aircraft. Followed by computers for "Concorde" with the "English-French Consortium".
Analogue computers (which people dispute were computers) did not use any software, so if you wished to change a parameter you probably needed to replace a couple of resistors and capacitors, change the input to a feedback loop, etc.
These computers had the equivalent of "For" and "While" loops, maths functions, such as X + Y (through AND gates). Most operations, including the mechanical read-out updates were done by "triggering" a transistor -- hence we got the 0 or 1 output.
Been working with software since -- still creating databases using LibreOffice Base connected to MySQL servers, creating WEB sites using HTML5, etc.
Not sure when this "retirement" thing is supposed to take place 
By the way I am a Pom, but have been living in New Zealand for the past 43 years. Yea there do seem to be a lot of "old farts" on this list
Tony Bray
tonybsa@mac.com
MacBook Pro 15 inch Mid 2009
Mac OS X 10.9.5.
LibreOffice 4.4.3, Coda 2 and a whole lot more.
Also runs Ubuntu 14.04 desktop using Parallels
Acer 15 inch laptop, 4 GB RAM
Ubuntu 14.04 desktop,
LibreOffice 4.3.? , BlueFish, MySQL server, MySQL workbench.
Mainly used as backup to HP server and for testing.
HP 15 laptop as server
Ubuntu 14.04 server, Apache2, PHP 5.5, MySQL server, MySQL workbench, Firefox, Chrome
James Knott schreef op 25-07-15 om 20:54:
We only had log tables; standard slide rules weren't allowed as they
were too inaccurate. Drifting a bit more OT, ball-point pens weren't allowed either, only fountain pens.To put this in some sort of perspective, I left school in 1962 aged 18.
Did they have slide rules way back then?
We used them in physics and electricity & electronics classes.
To tell you the truth: I still use my slide rule, very easy and useful for calculations that need only to be about 95% accurate with the correct order of magnitude. I even once corrected errors in an Excel spreadsheet with the help of my log tables in 7 decimals from the year 1867. The author promised a "Louis d'Or" for each error in the tables!
Greetings,
Erik.
James Knott schreef op 25-07-15 om 20:54:
We only had log tables; standard slide rules weren't allowed as they
were too inaccurate. Drifting a bit more OT, ball-point pens weren't allowed either, only fountain pens.To put this in some sort of perspective, I left school in 1962 aged 18.
Did they have slide rules way back then?
We used them in physics and electricity & electronics classes.
To tell you the truth: I still use my slide rule, very easy and useful for calculations that need only to be about 95% accurate with the correct order of magnitude. I even once corrected errors in an Excel spreadsheet with the help of my log tables in 7 decimals from the year 1867. The author promised a "Louis d'Or" for each error in the tables!
Greetings,
Erik.
/On 26/07/2015 14:50, Erik Jan wrote://
/
/To tell you the truth: I still use my slide rule, very easy and useful for calculations that need only to be about 95% accurate with the correct order of magnitude. I even once corrected errors in an Excel spreadsheet with the help of my log tables in 7 decimals from the year 1867. The author promised a "Louis d'Or" for each error in the tables! /
In my life at work, (from 60s to early 70s), in Laboratories I used Slide Rules all the time!! I had the 'Standard' type as well as a Circular one but eventually got a Tubular Slide Rule. It was aprox 3 to 4 cm in Diameter and closed up was about 10cm Tall (long), but because of its spiral design was the equivalent to a Standard 55" Slide Rule so very much more accurate.
In fact I still have two of these - the Standard one and the Tubular one!! (The Circular one has gone missing over the years.)
In one job I had in Bulawayo, (Rhodesia), in the late 60s I had to go down to the factory floor in the late afternoon to look after the production so used to keep all my calculation work for this period. The Production Manager's Desk was elevated over the Production Floor and the African Workers thought that it was a kind of "Calculating Microphone" I was using that I spoke the calculations into and it gave me the answers!! The floor was very noisy so that could only see me working the Slide Rule and then writing down the answers!!!
Only later on did we get the first 'Facit", hand operated "Calculating Machine' - you had to work out the position of the decimal point yourself, it just gave you a string of numbers!! Later we got electric ones!!! I believe the mechanics of the original Facit Calculators was developed somewhere in Scandinavia and working it all out drove the Inventor crazy. Having opened one up at one time I can understand why!!
Great times!!! I also remember later desperately trying to buy a "Four Function" Hand Calculator in Sanction Plagued Rhodesia for a ridicules price!! But later got a friend in America to get the first of several 'Texas Instruments' Calculators, (could never get the hang of Reverse Polish Notation as used by HP!!), and sending it to me!!!
Hard now to believe all these steps in development isn't it!!!! And let's not forget about Visi Calc!!!!!!
IanW
Pretoria RSA
openSUSE LINUX, three laptops. Both for work and 'home'.
I do a lot of work in LO, data grinding in calc, diagramming in Draw,
and maintain several large technical documents [600+ pages] in writer.
It works *great*. It is not perfect; cross-reference support still need
to be improved. But it works very well.