Progress

Inspired by Ken Petch's recent blip on decimal coinage, I searched for - and quickly found - my old slide-rule, an 18th birthday present in 1961.

It was such a cherished possession, a German-made Faber Castell with silky-smooth operation, lovely and expensive. I had borrowed a similar one from a friend to do exams at Cambridge during the summer, and had dropped it, breaking the cursor.

Just the little plastic slider thing, but it cost me 10 shillings to replace it, for which I could have bought eight pints of beer!

Ten years later came decimal currency, then the first calculators, then the computers and digital cameras and phones and all the rest of the stuff. I have lived through interesting and exciting times.

But how proud I was to own that Faber Castell, beautiful then, beautiful now.