Or the slide rule, for assisting with multiplication and division.

或者尺，用于辅助乘法和除法。

The guy with blueprints; the guy in a three-piece suit; the guy with a slide rule and calculator; the guy that's going to pave the forest and perhaps destroy whole ecosystems.

这些人带着蓝图，穿着三件套西装，随身携带着卷尺和器，这些人会在森林里修路，甚至可能摧毁整个生态系统。

The parting in his short gray hair was almost unnaturally straight, and his narrow toothbrush mustache looked as though he trimmed it using a slide rule.

银色短发几乎被不自然地梳得笔，短小胡子，像是比着滑尺修剪过。

Oh, and the phones, of course, mechanical typewriters and slide rules then, no fancy laptops and cell phones.

还有电话，当然，还有机械打字机和尺，没有花哨笔记本电脑和手机。

Right? So, what is a slide rule?

正确？那么， 什么是尺？

I have a fondness for the slide rule as an object.

我很喜尺这个物体。

That could never have been done with the slide rules of NASA in 1972.

这在1972年用美国宇航局滑尺是绝对无法完成。

Then he brought in some books on mathematics and physics and other things, and a bunch of slide rules, calculators, and junk.

然后拿来了一些关于数学和物理及其学科书籍，还有一堆尺、器和其杂物。

In this book, he talks about a compass, which is not a magnetic compass, but an actual slide rule.

在这本书中，谈到了一个指南针，这个指南针并非磁性指南针，而是一个真正尺。

Nobody uses a slide rule, unless you go to maybe Oxford in the 1960s.

没有人使用尺， 除非你在 1960 年代上过牛津大学。

In other words, you can model things with great predictability and accuracy using supercomputers that you couldn't possibly do sitting with a slide rule or sitting with Traditional mathematics.

换句话说，你可以使用超级机以极高预测性和准确性来建模，这是你用尺或传统数学方法根本无法做到。

When I visited my dad's house, I would marvel at the slide rules that he had in his junk drawer.

当我参观父亲房子时，我会对垃圾抽屉里尺感到惊讶。

But this was a manual for how to use this slide rule, which is enormously important.

但这本手册是关于如何使用尺，其重要性不言而喻。

My father graduated with a degree in mathematics, and I remember seeing slide rules around his house.

我父亲毕业时获得了数学学位，我记得在家里看到过尺。

And this means that if all you have is a slide rule, you have to simplify it.

这意味着如果你只有一把尺，你就必须简化它。

So, the calculator–the thing that we might recognize as a calculator–kind of has to have a different form because the slide rule's form isn't cutting it.

因此，器——我们可能认为是器东西——必须有不同形式，因为尺形式不能满足它需要。

And then really the next big innovation is a thing called the " slide rule." The slide rule was a major innovation that came along in the 1600s.

真正下一个重大创新是一种叫做“尺”东西。尺是 1600 年代出现一项重大创新。

Fundamentally, if you're going to be doing a lot of calculations with a slide rule, everything has to be linear, by which I mean most equations need to just be multiplications or divisions or just adding some constant number.

从根本上讲，如果您要使用尺进行大量，那么一切都必须是线性，我意思是大多数方程只需是乘法或除法，或者只是添加一些常数。

And the slide rule was just a kind of physical incarnation of that.

尺只是它一种物理化身。

It's that when you use the slide rule, at a certain point, you're essentially needing to estimate your result.

当您使用尺时，在某个时刻，您本质上需要估您结果。