32nd International Meeting of Collectors and Researchers
of Slide Rules and other Historic Computing Instruments

We had planned to have an in personam meeting in Mainz, Germany, but there were to few pre-registrations, so that we had to cancel all our local pre-arrangements and reservations. A sad story, but unavoidable. The online Zoom conference will be held at the same weekend as the originally planned face-to-face meeting in Mainz.

A key element of our life today is communication, in an incredible variety of forms based on a large spectrum of media. This web page is a first example, other (still) popular media are printed books, journals, newspapers, photos, posters, movies, records, radio and tv broadcasts, and many more media in multitudes of forms — just think of vinyl / CD-ROM / casette tape music records. The historic key invention by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450 in Mainz was the printed page based on its composition using movable letters, which allowed him to print many copies of a document instead of copying it by hand-writing. Gutenberg's invention triggered a cultural revolution and an avalange of communication forms and media. It is still going strong today, as evidenced by electronic messages, internet services, smartphones, etc, of recent decade — including this web page. That was the first reason for our original idea to have IM2026 in Mainz.

The second reason are the needs of various computations for all these types of media, starting with calculations to fit a given text in some predefined space on paper. This is just a first example; there are many more in printing, and obviously one this is here today as it was 500 years ago. Other media have tasks of such nature also, as well as many specific ones for the many types and forms of media. Therefore, it will not be a surprise that there are a number of calculating aids, in particular special slide rules and the like. Unfortunately, these specialities were often considered 'tricks of the trade' and not made public, or they were so special that only few were produced and thus remained largely unknown. But for some applications slide rules are still popular, like circular slide rules for copy-fitting or the reproduction of images by graphical artists and printers. Print is just one media type. There are many others, each with particular technology issues which require specific calculations aids and tools, or are highly desirable. Just think of anything with sound, from music to radio or tv news, and beyond. So we hope to see a number of most varied presentations on the motto of this IM, from short ones to large surveys.

Last not least, we also have to issue of slide rules in the media. We will have a special section on that also, and we already have one on slide rules in the movies.

Finally, we are not limited to this theme / motto, and we will have presentations of all kinds on slide rules and other historic computing aids. At former International Meetings presentations about the theme / motto were in the order of about a third to half of the conference program. It all depends on your contributions!

premilinary schedule of IM2026 sessions

Expect preliminary versions of the programme with the names of the speakers and the titles of their talk / paper sometime mid-August and the final version at the end of August.

For the registration we will very soon provide some forms, so that we have an overview of the audience, in order to serve you best. Please give us a few days for the details.

Although the International Meetings, like this IM2026, are organized by a couple of slide rule organizations, your participation does nor require any membership in one of them. Everybody is welcome!

Conferences like the IM live from the technical contributions. Accordingly, even more important than getting you as part of the audience, is getting you as a speaker. Please contact Karl.Kleine@eah-jena.de as soon as you have an idea about the subject you might already have or want to talk about. We have to avoid duplicate papers on the same subject, and need to coordinate efforts for a well-balanced programme.

We are interested in all kinds of subjects next to the general theme / motto, but also in all lengths of presentation. In particular, do not shy away if you feel you only have a tiny or not so important subject. We thus encourage short presentations of about 10 to 15 minutes next to the standard length of 20 to 30 minutes. On the other hand, we are open to proposals involving more time or more pages in the proceedings as usually available in slide rule journals.

Last not least, our subject area is not just slide rules, as it was for many years, but also includes all kinds of historic calculation and computing instruments. Surprise us!

As we want to have a printed record of our meeting, details for the preparation of papers are discussed under the heading 'proceedings' below and in personal contact.

We prepared a 'Guidelines for Authors' paper to help you (and us) with the preparation of your contribution. It is a set of rules and recommendations to make it easy for you and the editor to produce a high-quality typographical appearance of your article with maximum freedom for your writing. But most the important issue is:

More about the IM series of conferences is available on our IM history web page.

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