I suppose the windowless labs where these things are found wouldn’t power a solar calculator.
That one’s too small for the big jobs.
When I was sitting my finals at University (in 2000) we had a screed of complicated rules about what calculators we could use, and had to write our calculator model on the front page of the exam paper and so on. All of the above only applied to electronic calculators, though, so I sat my (physics) exams with a slide-rule just for the fun of watching the confused invigilators try to decide what to do about it.
Fortunately our examiners are kind and the numbers tended to only need practical precisions to work with on a slide-rule. 
… an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
One of the physics classrooms in my high school had a giant slide rule over the blackboard. They weren’t one-off custom novelties; teachers used them to demonstrate slide rule use.
Yeah, I’m old, but not old enough to have actually seen that big thing in use.
There’s one screwed to the wall of the library at Capitol Technology University but I wasn’t able to find a pic of it. :sad:
Big Data ain’t no new thang.
Out of sheer curiosity, this Simulated Pickett N909-ES Slide Rule:
http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-es.html
A whole dang gallery! o thank you o mysterious Derek wherever you are:
http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/
Also available, sliderule apps and oh dear… a virtual… abacus… ye gods.
In case of power outage, info grid outage, paucity of trained personnel who can use a slide rule, try using a paper and pencil. Deriving complex math formuale from first principles ain’t for the faint-hearted though!
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