1759–69 Edward Roberts Everard Pattern Slide Rule Everard, Thomas, an English Excise officer of the Excise [tax], designed rules specifically for the measurement of the content of various vessels and containers. In addition he added scales for the direct computation of square and cube roots.
The rules, usually square in section with a slide on each face, made by instrument makers such as Stutchbury, Roberts and Bate, pre-date this. They were probably the first commercially available slide rules, those made earlier were by private commission. It is Everard who is credited with introducing the term “sliding rule”, later being abbreviated to slide rule. [http://sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Terms.htm]
This slide rule was made by Edward Roberts, and is dated using the fact that it is labelled as Edward Roberts, Dove Court, Old Jewry, which is the way Edward Roberts Senior labelled his rules between 1759–69. After that they were labelled as 3 Dove Court. For a contemporaneous manual for the use of these gauging rules see I Rawbone, “The Royal Gauger”, Oxon, London, 1750.
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