Before I retired from teaching middle school science I came across a large demonstration slide rule, about six feet long, behind stacks of books in a little used storage room. I remember my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Dalton, back in the late 1960's, using one of these demonstration slide rules to teach us how to use slide rules.
So I figured I'd start a school slide rule club to teach interested students how to use slide rules, as old-timers did back before there were calculators. I got a local newspaper reporter to interview me for an article in which I asked people from town to check their attics and basements and donate any old slide rules to the school, and I received several donations.
After teaching the use of the slide rule, I figured the student club members could practice multiplication, division, squares, square roots, cubes, and cube root problems, and possibly having some type of "calculation contest" as a wrap-up activity.
I had a write up in the school club handbook, filled a display case in a hallway near my classroom with the slide rules I had collected, as well as the giant demonstration slide rule, and asked all math and science teachers in all three grades to talk-up the slide rule club.
I knew that the slide rule club wouldn't be a super popular club, but I figured that a few nerdy kids interested in science and/or math would sign up. The didn't even have to stay after school, clubs were held once a week during normal school hours (with shortened class periods that day).
750 kids in the school.
Not a single student signed up for the slide rule club as one of their top choices.
