A slide chart is a hand-held device, usually of paper, cardboard, or plastic, for conducting simple calculations or looking up information.
A circular slide chart is sometimes referred to as a wheel chart or
volvelle
A volvelle or wheel chart is a type of slide chart, a paper construction with rotating parts. It is considered an early example of a paper analog computer. Volvelles have been produced to accommodate organization and calculation in many divers ...
.
Unlike other hand-held mechanical calculating devices such as
slide rules
The slide rule is a mechanical analog computer which is used primarily for multiplication and division, and for functions such as exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry. It is not typically designed for addition or subtraction, which ...
and
addiator
The Addiator is a mechanical add/subtract calculator, once made by Addiator Gesellschaft, Berlin. Variants of it were manufactured from 1920 until 1982. It is composed of sheet-metal sliders inside a metal envelope, manipulated by a stylus, wit ...
s, which have been replaced by electronic calculators and computer software, wheel charts and slide charts have survived to the present time. There are a number of companies who design and manufacture these devices.
Unlike the general-purpose mechanical calculators, slide charts are usually devoted to carrying out a particular specialized calculation, or displaying information on a single product or a particular process. For example, the "CurveEasy" wheel chart displays information related to spherical geometry calculations, and the Prestolog calculator is used for cost/profit calculations. Another example of a wheel chart is the
planisphere
In astronomy, a planisphere () is a star chart analog computing instrument in the form of two adjustable disks that rotate on a common pivot. It can be adjusted to display the visible stars for any time and date. It is an instrument to assist ...
, which shows the location of stars in the sky for a given location, date, and time.
Slide charts are often associated with particular sports, political campaigns or commercial companies. For example, a pharmaceutical company may create wheel charts printed with their company name and product information for distribution to medical practitioners.
Slide charts are common collectables.
See also
* The
E6B
The E6B flight computer is a form of circular slide rule used in aviation and one of the very few analog calculating devices in widespread use in the 21st century.
They are mostly used in flight training, because these flight computers have b ...
aviation flight computing device, still in regular use
References
* ''Reinventing the Wheel'',
Jessica Helfand
Jessica Helfand (born 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a designer, author, and educator. She is a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, and founding editor of the website Design Observer. S ...
, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. ()
External links
Slide Chart Examples
Communication design
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