Significant digits in a float?

[Mark H Harris]

On 5/1/14 8:47 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 22:54:21 -0500, Mark H Harris <harrismh777 at gmail.com>
> declaimed the following:
>
>>
>>     My high school '74 was the last class to learn the slide-rule using
>> the Sterling (we paid a deposit to use the school's).

> 	Since calculators had started to appear, I never did get formal
> training in slide-rules. The LL scales still require me to glance at a
> guide book...
>
> 	I regret that I never risked the $35 dollars when my college bookstore
> was closing out the slide-rule display. They had the top Post bamboo
> laminate rule at half price. At the time I'd bought an HP-25 calculator
> [they phased out the HP brand a year or two later -- apparently RPN was too
> confusing].

     Half way through my senior year the HP-65 "gold key" calculator was 
available for about $800.00 dollars. That sucker was programmable and 
had magnetic strip recorder for off-loading storage... but I digress. We 
all had our priorities... one guy bought one;  the rest of us bought 
cars. ---for about the same price too!

     I used my rule well into college; the first calculator I owned was 
the Rockwell 63R --- "The Big green numbers, and the little rubber feet!"

marcus