By The Slide Rule Of Avogadro!

I Was Going To Bang On -
 - about Differential Analysers, having touched briefly on this subject a while ago, and having had my curiosity re-piqued as of earlier this week, whilst reading about wartime research in the Allotment during the Second Unpleasantness.  Then, of course, I had to get clever and bring in both i) the slide rule and ii)  Amadeo Avogadro, by way of an eye-catching title.  So we start with a tangent, which is pretty much business as usual round here.
     First of all, the slide rule.  Wiki (hail to the fount of all knowledge!) describes this as a "mechanical analog computer" which is a posh way of calling it a ruler with pretensions.  Art?

See?  A ruler.  With pretensions.

     You jiggled about with the central bit, and those different scales gave you a reading in different values - cube roots, squares, logs, all that sort of mathematical gubbins - under the cursor.
     Here an aside.  Conrad is probably of the last generation to use these devices, as the cheap electronic calculator came in and killed them stone dead.  After 400 years, too.
     Then there was Ol' Avvie.  An Italian scientist who came up with Avogadro's constant, which is something frightfully clever about how many atoms there are on the head of a pin.  Interesting chap who originally graduated in ecclesiastical law before moving on to chemistry.  He was around between 1776 and 1856 so he must have used a slide rule.  Art?

Avvie

     Okay, that's the Intro, now for the wildly entertaining world of the - differential analyser*!

     - but first I have to trot out a few clerihews.  

British Scientists
Nothing at all perfidious about this lot, who are all shining pillars of wonderfulness. Mostly; I think Sir Isaac had a baffling interest in either thaumaturgy or alchemy**.  So!  Let the themed traducing begin!

Sir Isaac Newton

Slept on a futon.

He really needed a comfy bed, 

After that apple fell on his head.

     Concussion, you see.  Of course he didn't really sleep on a futon, as this is a form of Japanese bedding and that country was a closed cultural book until the South Canadians turned up there in 1857.  Though he could have had an extra-specially soft eider-down mattress.

Sir Isaac, rocking the Brian May look

Sir Bernard Lovell

Ate food with a shovel.

The man had no table manners - 

He cut his bread with a pair of spanners!

     I doubt this is true.  Although - if he was as absent-minded and forgetful as some scientists are in real life, he might well have tried to eat soup with a hand trowel, or put E45 on his sandwich in lieu of salad cream***.  Art?

Ol' Bernie and his microscope

Henry Tizard

Had a pet lizard

He taught it to drive his car, 

Which helped him to invent radar

     In case you are unfamiliar, Ol' Hen was a big cheese in the Allotment's wartime scientific establishment, and did indeed help to invent radar.  

Tizzie

     He was also involved with Tube Alloys, the Ridiculously Secret project by Perfidious old Albion to develop an atomic bomb.  So- er - perhaps not entirely wonderful if viewed from the cockpit of a Heinkel bomber about to be intercepted by radar-controlled Hurricanes, nor if you were a paranoid Sinister dictator sitting in the Kremlin waiting to be turned into a cloud of radioactive vapour.

John Logie Baird

Was taste-impaired.

You could cook him a Cordon Bleu meal;

It wouldn't help his taste buds feel.

     Not sure about this one.  He was Scottish, and - well, stovies?  Tatties and neeps? Black bun?  Oatmeal rounds?

DANGER!!  YELLOW FOOD!!

An Artisinal Lot
Today we ventured to Blackpool, where the sultry sullen thunderheads that loomed loweringly over Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell were scattered by gentle zephyrs from the sea - can you tell I'm trying to pad this one out a bit?
     Enter Highfield Road in Stag-Party-on-Sea, where there were many charity shops to keep Wonder Wifey busy and where your humble scribe also procured a few of William Caxton's best^.
     Also this shop.  Art?

Where Tizard got his lizard?

     I do so like to see them providing "Quality" reptiles, as the deficient ones are quite off-putting for collectors.
     Nor was that all.  They had a "Spinal and Sports Injury" treatment shopfront, and another one for "Just Guitars" -

No drums.  Just guitars

     Plus Jo Jo's Cupcakes, with some rather good flower cupcakes on display, even if they were too expensive to eat.  Art?


     Plus an Italian Barber's, but that's a bit dull.

     Oh no!  No room left for differential analysers!  Maybe tomorrow.

*  This is a lie.
**  One begets the other.
***  If this starts a fad, I want royalties.
^  Books