On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 at 01.35.03 -0500, Chuck Cole wrote: > Several kinds of applications require more than 8 digit precision. > HP calculators are the only ones that have at least 10 digits of > precision throughout. We could not use TI scientific calculators except > as slide rule replacements because of their 8 digit limited precision. > Discovering that 8 digits was not enough at all in these applications > made a deep impression on me. Ten digits on a slide rule? How exactly does that work? Given that a normal ten-inch slide rule has three digits of precision throughout the scale (four on the left side, blah blah), you'd need a slide rule 106 feet long to get ten digits. I don't know how much precision a five-inch pocket slide rule has, so maybe I'm off buy one factor of two. `Three digits is enough for most things' was the slide rule mantra. -- Sidney CAMMERESI http://www.cheesecake.org/sac/