Slide rule by Robert Bissaker

Made:
1654 in England and London
maker:
Robert Bissaker
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Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Bissaker's slide rule, 1654
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Thacher's cylindrical slide rule
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Slide rule made by Robert Bissaker in 1654
Science Museum Group
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London

Slide rule made by Robert Bissaker in 1654, Radcliffe (now Wapping), London. Signed 'Robert Bissaker 1654 For T W'. It is the earliest-known dated straight slide rule.

Bissaker made this slide rule in 1654 for someone with the initials T.W, but this person has not been indentified. The mathematician William Oughtred was the first to use the newly invented logarithmic scales to form a calculating instrument with scales that could move with respect to one another. This is the earliest known dated straight slide rule which uses scales bound together with metal bands. Other slide rules were circular. By the late-seventeenth century slide rules were established for use by excise officers and in carpentry. Bissaker worked in Radcliffe, an area in east London which is near what is now known as Wapping, specialising in wooden instruments and his customers were probably seafarers.

Details

Category:
Mathematics
Object Number:
1898-30
Materials:
box (wood) and brass (copper, zinc alloy)
Measurements:
Closed: 25 mm x 670 mm x 25 mm, 0.305 kg
type:
slide rule
credit:
Wilkinson, J.