K&E 4080-3 ---- 1936-1939 Scale Set Produced In 1937

This slide rule is a very clean example of a 4080-3. From the serial number and the story that goes with this rule it is clear that it was produced in the early part of 1937 just as the 4080-3 was first announced in the 1937 slide rule only catalog by K&E.

This rule was donated by Mary Jane Ballou to the Oughtred Society. The rule was given to her father as a graduation present when he graduated from Stanford Business School in 1937. The following is Mary Jane's story about her father:

My father’s name was George Tate Ballou.  He was born in 1914 in Rodley, Colorado on a homestead.  When he was still quite young, his family migrated to the Central Valley in California, living here and there, farming and doing construction, ending up in East Palo Alto.  He graduated from Sequoia High School in 1931.  One of his teachers told him he “had no business going to college because he clearly wasn’t college material.”  He worked his way through San Jose State and then B-school at Stanford.  After the war, he worked for Standard Oil Company of California in San Francisco, New York, and then in San Francisco, finishing as a Senior Vice President.  His specialties were economics and domestic and foreign government relations.  After retirement, he did consulting and remained heavily involved in San Francisco civic affairs until his death in in 1994. So much for what high school teachers know about poor boys!

Front side

Back side

Edge showing serial number