Another dying skill?

[morqthana]

I recently got a digital caliper gauge, and I thought is that it for ever using my analogue one ever again?

And I wondered if being able to read a Vernier scale is now a dying, soon to be extinct, skill, in the same way that using a slide rule became?

40-60 years ago "people like me" could use a slide rule, but we stopped because calculators were so much easier (apart from specialised vector slide rules). But when I was at school we had slide rules just like we had pens and pencils.

I couldn't now pick up a slide rule and just use it, but I bet the knowledge is still "in there somewhere", and that if I did pick one up and start "learning" to use it something would click and it would all come back.

But how many of today's 15 - 30 (say) y.olds would know how to use one?

How long before being able to read a Vernier goes the same way? Before people start saying "my Dad/Granddad had one of those. No idea how it works"?

 

[blup]

Could you fashion a bow from yew, then fire an arrow 200 yards onto a small target? Do you know which plants are medicinal or poisonous? Technology moves on. Ironically, resources like YouTube mean those dying arts are often preserved.

 

[johnny2007]

I still use my trustworthy manual caliper.
Many kids who worked with me had never seen one.
One of the most useful tools ever invented.

 

[CountryFan]

I still use my trustworthy manual caliper.
Many kids who worked with me had never seen one.
One of the most useful tools ever invented.

Seen them but never used one or found the need.

 

[Scally-Ho]

I still use my vernier gauge and also my micrometer in my workshop as go-to essentials. Without them my lathe would be redundant.
As for guessing sticks (slide rules) they were all that was available before the electronic calculator.

 

[johnny2007]

Seen them but never used one or found the need.

That's why they don't call you Mr millimetre.
That's how they call me...

 

[CountryFan]

That's why they don't call you Mr millimetre.

Not sure I'd want to be called that

 

[johnny2007]

Not sure if want to be called that

I know, I know.
People have been taking the **** since a building control inspector called me that decades ago (he was referring to precision in my work, just to be clear )
I don't mind, my wife can vouch for me...

 

[morqthana]

Could you fashion a bow from yew, then fire an arrow 200 yards onto a small target? Do you know which plants are medicinal or poisonous? Technology moves on. Ironically, resources like YouTube mean those dying arts are often preserved.

No, of course I can't do those things. (But then not everyone could do the first in mediæval times, and being able to do the latter risked being accused of being a witch).

Of course technology moves on, but is that always an unalloyed benefit? I wouldn't prefer to go back to using a slide rule instead of a calculator, but there's a case to be made that you learn more about how numbers work if you've used log tables and slide rules rather than just hit buttons on a calculator.

"Dying arts", or "traditional skills"?

How many woodworkers here still prefer hand planes to electric ones? Or handsaws? At least for some tasks - I thought it was interesting that in that video of the building of a traditional Norwegian boat, despite their use of hand tools, and even though they'd taken axes into the forest to cut planks, they used a chainsaw to fell the tree.

Will I lament personally losing instant access to the ability to read a vernier scale? Probably not.

Should we, with a wider perspective, lament generations growing up without ever acquiring that skill in the first place? Not such an easy "no".

 

[morqthana]

I still use my vernier gauge and also my micrometer in my workshop as go-to essentials. Without them my lathe would be redundant.

For sure you need calipers and a micrometer.

But can they not be ones with a digital readout?

As for guessing sticks (slide rules) they were all that was available before the electronic calculator.

There were log tables.

 

[stevie888]

I still have my old faithfull Uni sliderule and still use it once in a while as there are tasks (such as multiplying a series of numbers by a `constant) that are easier done that way.

I also use standard form when I do calcs (and always encouraged my students to do the same when I was lecturing) as it's much easier to get the right number of zeros in the answer.

 

[foxhole]

Could you fashion a bow from yew, then fire an arrow 200 yards onto a small target? Do you know which plants are medicinal or poisonous? Technology moves on. Ironically, resources like YouTube mean those dying arts are often preserved.

Made a couple of crossbows in school , does that count?

 

[blup]

Made a couple of crossbows in school , does that count?

Yes, you’re booked for the Agincourt trip

 

[Munroast]

I recently got a digital caliper gauge, and I thought is that it for ever using my analogue one ever again?


But how many of today's 15 - 30 (say) y.olds would know how to use one?

How long before being able to read a Vernier goes the same way? Before people start saying "my Dad/Granddad had one of those. No idea how it works"?

I'm just about 20 (esp on beers with the boys nights) and I have no problem with vernier gauges - I still use these vernier micrometers for super accuracy, had the decades!
I do check them against certificated digital stuff, and these are always just as good

anyone tell me what they are reading ?

 

[Mottie]

anyone tell me what they are reading ?

4.965

I know them as micrometers though.

This is what I know a vernier as.