Quote:
Originally Posted by Rev. Bob
Similar stakes apply to transcribing Morse code. Nuclear stakes, for example.
EDIT: I mean, I get using logarithmic tables and geometric function tables, and that's probably the correspondence RAH was drawing. Trouble is, deriving sine and tangent values is much more complicated than remembering how to multiply and divide by two.
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Is it possible that the author left some recognizable technology in so that readers could have some common cultural touchpoints and possibly relate to the story better?
It has always seemed to me that science fiction that was too 'Out there' never did as well commercially as SF that was more believable to the reader. Those lines are now a bit blurry because, well, practically anything seems possible now. But in the middle of the 20th century, I don't think that was true.