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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9330583" data-attributes="member: 7044704">True, although I remember him more for overusing &quot;slipstick&quot; in place of slide rule - which wasn't really all that unusual for a time period where every engineer and mathematician knew how to use one.&nbsp; Heck, I don't think you could get out of the higher levels of high school math without knowing your way around a slide rule back in those days.&nbsp; Given that at its most basic &quot;integrating&quot; pretty much just means &quot;capable of solving for a function&quot; it's easy to apply it to a lot of tools if you want to sound more technical, even if it's kind of meaningless.&nbsp; Maybe Smith was just enraptured by early integrating calculators or something?&nbsp;&nbsp; The fact that it adds to one's word count (and income as a pulp writer) might be a factor here as well...&quot;Goniometer&quot; is an extremely broad term, and they don't have to be some kind of exotic specialized tool (although many are).&nbsp; Anything that can be used to precisely determine an angle is a goniometer, and everyone who's ever used a protractor in an art or geometry class has used a goniometer whether they knew it or not.&nbsp; They're used today in many fields, although I'm not sure how common it is to actually apply the term to the devices in question even when using specialized technical language.I'm not sure exactly what an &quot;integrating goniometer&quot; for aviation applications would be, but at a guess it'd have something to do with radio direction finding or more general course plotting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9330583, member: 7044704"] True, although I remember him more for overusing "slipstick" in place of slide rule - which wasn't really all that unusual for a time period where every engineer and mathematician knew how to use one. Heck, I don't think you could get out of the higher levels of high school math without knowing your way around a slide rule back in those days. Given that at its most basic "integrating" pretty much just means "capable of solving for a function" it's easy to apply it to a lot of tools if you want to sound more technical, even if it's kind of meaningless. Maybe Smith was just enraptured by early integrating calculators or something? The fact that it adds to one's word count (and income as a pulp writer) might be a factor here as well... "Goniometer" is an extremely broad term, and they don't have to be some kind of exotic specialized tool (although many are). Anything that can be used to precisely determine an angle is a goniometer, and everyone who's ever used a protractor in an art or geometry class has used a goniometer whether they knew it or not. They're used today in many fields, although I'm not sure how common it is to actually apply the term to the devices in question even when using specialized technical language. I'm not sure exactly what an "integrating goniometer" for aviation applications would be, but at a guess it'd have something to do with radio direction finding or more general course plotting. [/QUOTE]

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