I as a Divemaster and many others used one of these,
a dive calculator, looking like a circular slide rule it cold calculate the amount of time you could safely SCUBA dive without the dangers of dive related problems,
just dial in your profile and read the time you could safely spend underwater, photographs diveinstructor.com but today I found a circular slide rule with a much more sinister use,
a devise for calculating the number of people that would be killed in a nuclear blast, from the Smithsonian:
From 1962
onward, copies of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons had a pocket
containing a Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer. Setting the indices on the front of
the instrument for the yield of a nuclear bomb in megatons and the distance of
its explosion in miles, scales on the front of the instrument describe changes
in atmospheric pressure and winds associated with the blast, as well as
cratering and the velocity of window glass. Charts on the back indicate the
initial nuclear radiation and the thermal radiation. Tables indicate the
probable medical effects of various doses of radiation, from no illness to
severe burns to death. The Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer was developed at the
Lovelace Foundation in Albuqueque, New Mexico, for the United States Atomic
Energy Commission.
what a chilling thought, that someone could make a device like this, amazingly there can still be bought on Amazon, but moving on, here is a nuclear blast calculator that is available online, hopefully never to be used in anger.
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