Joost Bürgi and Logarithms
Logarithms are a common idea today, even though we don’t use them as often as we used to. After all, one of the major uses of logarithms is to simplify …read more Continue reading Joost Bürgi and Logarithms
Category Archives: logarithms
Count Leading Zeros for Efficient Logarithms
[Ihsan Kehribar] points out a clever trick you can use to quickly and efficiently compute the logarithm of a 32-bit integer. The technique relies on the CLZ instruction which counts …read more Continue reading Count Leading Zeros for Efficient Logarithms
Rubber Band “Slide Rule” Doesn’t Slide, but Rotates
Around here we mostly enjoy slide rules. We even have our own collections including some cylindrical and circular ones. But [Mathologer] discusses a recent Reddit post that explains a circular …read more Continue reading Rubber Band “Slide Rule” Doesn’t Slide, but Rotates
Vintage Console Becomes the Calculator it Appears to Be
What’s sitting on [Bob Alexander]’s desk in the video below did not start out life as the desktop calculator it appears to be. Turning it into a standalone calculator with features the original designers couldn’t imagine turned out to be an interesting project, and a trip down the retrocomputing rabbit …read more
Continue reading Vintage Console Becomes the Calculator it Appears to Be