Right here in Hoboken, the Keuffel & Esser Company made instruments that helped make the modern world. They didn't invent the slide rule, but they sold more of them than any other company. The slide rule has been around since the Mayflower came to North America, according to Dr. Deborah Douglas, Curator, Science & Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum. In 2004, the MIT Museum received the landmark donation of the Keuffel & Esser Company Slide Rule Collection.
The MIT Museum curator will visit the Hoboken Historical Museum on Sunday, May 23 at 4 p.m., to share some of the best stories she knows about slide rules and the great American firm, Keuffel & Esser, that made more of them than any other company in the world.
"In the in the 20th century the slide rule became the iconic, archetypal instrument of engineers," according to Dr. Douglas. "It may have seemed nerdy to carry one around, but engineers knew that if they knew how to use one, they could make things bigger, faster, stronger and that they could make things that had never existed before." The slide rule is the most important technological instrument of that most people know nothing about, she says.
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Admission is free for Museum members; a $2 donation is requested from other visitors.
