I grew up in the Imperial Valley, the southeast corner of California. Big farming area in a desert.
My dad worked for the Imperial Irrigation District as a zanjero, a ditch rider. Farmers and other water-users like cities and industries buy water, which is delivered through a series of canals, originating in the Colorado River 70 to 100 miles away. They have done this for about 100 years.
They measure water to sell by the acre-foot which is an acre covered a foot deep in water. (For metric people, an acre is about 40 meters by 100 meters and a foot is about 30 centimeters, so: 1.2 million liters.)
But the way it was measured was to find out how deep the water was at the delivery gate it flowed through and how big the gate was.
It works out to a gate a foot wide and a foot tall with a foot of water above the top of the gate; if the water runs for 24 hours, it comes out to almost exactly an acre-foot, only off by ~1/2 %.
Dad was responsible for making sure that the water ordered was delivered. Zanjeros work at the delivery end, hydrographers measure the water at the supply end, but both jobs involve calculating water flow through a complex system.
They had tables for figuring this all out based on different-sized gates and different heads (depths) of water and how long it ran.
I found this out when I was in junior high, learning logarithms and calculus. But my dad did all the math in his head. Saved him an hour or two a day looking things up and doing the math on paper.
He had memorized the log tables in the back of the books. Dad said it wasn't that hard; you only needed the first two digits, and you could guess the third. And he only had to be right to about 2% error.
I showed him my slide rule and he said that would have been handy to have.
Now, we have powerful computers in our pockets.
No one in the rest of human history is going to have a good reason to memorize the log tables.
Enjoy the future today.
Hugs,
Erin
Comments
Memory
Those wonderful devices . . . now we don’t have to scrunch up our faces as we try to recall the lyrics to a song, or the groceries, or the name of the person we knew in high school who was such a grapefruit. Two seconds and our memory is refreshed.
But our ability to punch through the brain farts on our own, to overcome the senior moments, atrophies if we don’t use it. I remember my parents’ phone number, inactive for well over a decade now. And my California Drivers’ License Number, which expired over 30 years ago. But I couldn’t tell you my son’s phone number today (because speed dial) or my current state driver’s license number. So maybe memory itself was better, in my living memory?
Emma
Life is nothing but numbers now
Driver's Lic is ten numbers and letters long. Back in the dark ages it was the same as my SS number.
Telephone, yes I remember my parent's phone number last called over thirty years ago. I remember my current telephone number and our original telephone number from thirty years earlier. The six telephone numbers in between the two? Not in this lifetime. Area code number changed even though never moved.
Thank God they haven't changed my SS nor the numbers they stamped on my dog tags.
Don't forget all those little numbers on every piece of mail after the to and return addresses.
Home address has been changed five times even though I haven't moved since Moses parted the Red Sea. They gave me a 911 address on top of the mailing address, home address, and farm address.
Tax number of course
Farm Tax Number
Business Tax Number
Bank account number
Numbers I need to pay my elec bill, my gas bill, my phone bill, my internet bill, my high speed internet bill.
Credit card number and expiration date along with the three digit confirmation number
Birth date seems to have stayed the same, for now.
Is it too late to leave this Merry go Round? I believe I'm past my expiration date.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Phone numbers
I often wonder what the part of my brain that used to remember phone numbers is doing now.
However, I don't have any trouble remembering my Oregon driver's license number. back in the 70s, someone told me that I should engrave my driver's license number on everything valuable that I owned with the prefix "ODL" in front. ODL would identify the the number as an Oregon Driver's License number. If anything was ever stolen and turned up in a pawn shop, they could use the number to track me down and return the item. I'm still waiting for the return of my microwave, television, 7.5 Schmidt–Rubink, Lafayette micro 23, and my 7 band shortwave receiver.
The burglar only hit the main floor of my house. I had marked another dozen items that were stored upstairs. So that number is burned in for good.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
We Are Grizabella
The more technology we employ the dumber we get.
Do you ever wonder how long it was after the first office Xerox was installed that someone sat on it?
We've reached the pinnacle of stupidity. . .we're killing ourselves. The only question is will it be done by extreme weather or nuclear war. Maybe both.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
The Feeling of Power?
This brings to mind "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov.
Yeah
When I read that story a few years later, it made me think of Dad. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Slipstick
I still have my slide rule. Last used in the 70s as an aid in Time-Speed-Distance Rallyes "Equipped" class competition. It's a bit of nostalgia for me and curiosity for anyone who's around when I come across it.
I'm beginning to think I understand why people get Alzheimer's disease. The old memories are from when we needed our memory. These days we don't need to remember anything except why we came into the room we're in.
I don't mean to brag, but yesterday. I did that; remember why I went into a room. But then, it was the bathroom, so maybe it doesn't count.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Bathrooms
It's well-known that bathrooms only count to two. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
'Bout forty+ (Yikes!) years ago ...
I was sitting some "intro to psychology" class, and they got to calculating the standard deviation on a data set.
So it was:
- get the data ... scribble ... scribble ...
- add up the values ... scribble ... scribble ...
- take the square root ... sounds of the Titanic committing seppuku on that iceberg ... I felt the room temperature drop about ten degrees "social".
And I'm sitting there with my slide rule hanging from my belt, thinking: "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You're going to make an Engineering student pull a square root ..."
I was in that course because, as near as I can figure, the College of Engineering was requiring some number of hours of Humanities courses to install souls into us geeks ...
I've had similar experiences but in Economics lectures.
Then we had US text books. I believe when it's claimed that authors of those are paid by the kilo (our should it be by the pound?).
When reduced to summaries, diagrams and definitions of terms, a nominal full semester was compressed into 60 effective hours (of which 10 were spent in exams).