The submitted URL (<a href="http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/JournalArticle/The_Lost_Art_of_Nomography.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Journal...</a>) is not currently returning a pdf. There's an archived version at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111226124705/http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/JournalArticle/The_Lost_Art_of_Nomography.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20111226124705/http://myreckonin...</a>.<p>In the meantime I think we can change the URL to <a href="https://deadreckonings.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nomography.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://deadreckonings.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nomograph...</a>, which has an earlier version of the same piece.
If you like Nomograms or other mechanical mathematical curiosities, do check out @ChrisStaecker on YouTube. He does short, funny reviews/how-to videos for his collection of nomograms, measuring tools, mechanical and paper calculators.<p>Unfortunately his channel also mixes his university lectures, so you have to check out his playlist [0].<p>Here's a nomogram for solving a quadratic equation. Check out the O-riginal video on YT! [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLFpXNanTP9X6lHrX9qoJroqGAQRDDvV9">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLFpXNanTP9X6lHrX9qoJ...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swCy6pQSEpk&list=PLLFpXNanTP9X6lHrX9qoJroqGAQRDDvV9&index=7">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swCy6pQSEpk&list=PLLFpXNanTP...</a>
I don't have the image at hand but the most impressive nomogram (?) I've seen was in a pilot's operating handbook for some version of the DC-3.<p>It allows you to calculate take-off ground run distance as a function of no less than four variables! Namely,<p>- gross weight,<p>- altitude,<p>- headwind, and<p>- softness of ground surface.<p>The same POH also had two more useful (but simpler) nomograms:<p>- density altitude as a function of temperature and altitude, and<p>- rate of climb as a function of density altitude and gross weight.<p>The reason I remember these two is not that they were particularly cool on their own, but because they were placed side-by-side in the POH so you could also think of them as a single nomogram that let you compute rate of climb as a function of temperature, altitude, and gross weight.
In the Pixar movie "Lightyear", at some point we see Buzz using an E6B calculator to quickly calculate a trajectory correction in space.<p>The E6B is some kind of nomogram/slide rule hybrid, still widely in use by pilots in flight training for dead reckoning.<p>Funny fact, the chart that Buzz uses in the film is used to calculate <i>wind</i> correction...in space. (Well he does get 'pushed' off course by the wind of an explosion).
I am very grateful to all programmers and scientists who have contributed to making R packages for almost everything. Including the generation of simple nomograms: <a href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/2017/04/generating-dynamic-nomograms-using-dynnom/" rel="nofollow">https://www.r-bloggers.com/2017/04/generating-dynamic-nomogr...</a>
Wonder why the art was "lost" (maybe between 2008 and now, as the title does not contain th word)? I guess it is true that with computer program one does not have to rely an books. However, looking at the civil engineering books of my wife, which a full of nomograms, I would not consider it lost. I guess they follow a similar fate as logarithmic tables.
A practical guide to nomography:<p><a href="http://www.projectrho.com/nomogram/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.projectrho.com/nomogram/index.html</a>