Modern Tirpitz

[NARSES2]

You'll be bringing up slide rules and vernier calipers next...

I was taught at school how to use logs and verniers but just missed slide rules (although my father has one and taught me how to use it).

We were allowed to take slide rules into our O Level maths exams. Log and other necessary tables were provided.

The slide rules that scared me were the circular ones  Seriously weird.

The National Computing Museum at Bletchley Park has a fascinating collection of old world calculators from old slide rules through to "Grinders",tabulators and comptometres. When I started work we used "grinders" and used to hold races with them ranging from the "all the ones sprint" over 1 minute to the 1 hour "all the nines" marathon. Those were the days 

For those not familiar this is a "Grinder", there were also cylindrical ones http://www.countbelmiro.com/multo/multo.html

[zenrat]

That Grinder looks like something you'd use to encode messages on a U Boat.  Which I guess isn't surprising.

[MikeD]

You'll be bringing up slide rules and vernier calipers next...

I was taught at school how to use logs and verniers but just missed slide rules (although my father has one and taught me how to use it).

Verniers are still in regular use in a lot of places (although I'd guess most of them are the newer digital versions) - we used them a lot in my last job for checking metalwork/components.

[zenrat]

Digital calipers are cheating.   

[Joe C-P]

AIU the issue with technology for large guns is not that we don't know how to do it anymore, it's that we no longer have the giant machines required to process 16" gun barrels.

Hmm. Watervliet Arsenal might still have some such in store.
I never did get into the museum there, despite passing it dozens of times when visiting my parents in Lake George, and later Saratoga.

JoeP