A building that looks the part

Here is the Physics and Mathematics faculty building in Bashkir State University, in the city of Ufa, capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia.

See what it looks like?

Depends on your age or your affection for the history of computing, I suppose.  This building looks like a logarithmic slide rule, the icon of the exact sciences before the arrival of electronic calculators in the mid-seventies.

If you have no idea what those lovely devices were, here is a pocket model. Or check my collection.

The big question is whether this was intentional? Fellow collector David Rance, who presented it in a collectors’ meeting in Bletchley Park in September, says it was. If so, what a perfect  design for a Physics and Math building!

You can read more in David’s article here.