Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/19/adam-savage-looks-at-folding-rulers.html
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EDC forum goers immediately pour into antique stores and markets after watching that video
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Folding rulers are one of those things that hipsters love to pretend are better and their fauxstalgia blinds them to the fact that everyone instantly switched to tape measures as soon as they were invented for good reason.
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Different use cases; I have both tape measures and an extension rule. There are times I can’t physically reach one end of the thing I want to measure (not conveniently at least), and the rigidity of the extension rule makes it the better tool for the job.
Plus, it’s fun to fold and unfold, so it’s a tool and a toy!
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I have two folding rulers, inherited from my father. I use one fairly often, because it will lie flat on the workbench and leave both my hands free to, for example, measure repeated lengths of cord or wire. The curved blade of a tape measure won’t lie flat, and the whole thing is prone to topple over at the slightest touch. Better? No. Better for certain tasks? Yes. (I am not now, nor have I ever been, a hipster.)
Like Adam Savage, I’m fascinated by old oddball tools. My other folding rule is an example. It’s 36" long, rather than the more common 24", and it has an extra hinge at the 11" mark (or the 25" mark, depending on which side you’re looking at). I have no idea what that could be used for, or where Dad got it.
Pro tip: Estate sales. Cut out the middleperson of the antique dealer, who will charge an outrageous markup.
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My dad was a carpenter, and I have his folding ruler and some of the flat pencils he’d used. His folding ruler is in pretty great condition, because he stopped using it in preference to a tape measure. And he preferred round pencils because he could keep them behind his ear, while the flat ones would fall out.
I can still see him with his glasses way down on his nose, a cigarette drooping out from under his moustache, and a pencil sticking out of his gray curls.
A friend of his, a cabinet maker, liked the folding ruler when he was on jobsites, but only used long metal rulers in his shop. He also had stapled/glued tape measures to several of his work surfaces. He was fun to be around. He drank bourbon pretty much continuously, had quite a stutter, and a thick German accent and swore profusely in German and English. I remember standing there as a little kid in awe at all the things coming out of this guy’s mouth.
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I truly can’t believe he didn’t show a specimen with the caliper built in. I have a little handful of Olde Measuring Thyngs and these are far and away my favorite. (Photo not mine; easier to find a photo than to take one 
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Ok - so where’s the version with caliper, level, angle measuring thingy, AND military grade flashlight*
(* compulsory for EDC afficionados)
/s
I’d settle for one with all that but no flashlight. 
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I was going to add, “and bottle opener”, but I realized that’s what the caliper is for.
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Carpenters and most craftspeople in Germany almost exclusively use folding rulers. I myself included (if you can call archaeology a trade). I really don’t understand how people can work with the wobbly inexactness of tape measures. The only tape measures that are of any use in my opinion are the 20m or 50m survey tape measures. There’s absolutely nothing hipster about this.
Plus, what the hell do tool companies and carpenters give away as promotional gift if not branded folding rules?
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Based on the responses in this thread, I once again regret my hasty off-hand snark. Long live folding rulers. 
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Another data point that Germans love folding rulers!
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Well, the second pic shows a fiberglass survey range rod, so it definitely wasn’t “found” at the dig site. 
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You don’t know that.
Having spent a few summers waving one of those back and forth, I know what it is, although if I recall they were wood back in the day.
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Um, yes I do. Years of waiving one of those around, and alternately standing stock-still with the bubble rod.
Yes, the olden rods were wood, and man were the 25-footers heavy!
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Luckily I only know them in aluminium. And equally luckily they have long been supplanted by total stations and differential GPS. Though those staffs can also become quite heavy when you’re carrying them around all day.
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It’s fine. Just pretend you were talking about vinyl. Then I would agree whole-heartedly with you.
Oh gosh- I ain’t touchin’ that one. Those vinyl people take themselves very seriously indeed. 
