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The pictured set may be a little fancier than the one I had when at school, but the contents haven’t changed a bit. As soon as you went to secondary school the first thing your new Maths teacher told you was to get hold of a geometry set for future lessons. All the kids would go home and tell their parents about this new requirement, and after your Mum had moaned a bit about “more expense” a trip to WH Smiths would follow to pick one up.
Most kids would end up with a geometry set made by stationery company Helix, which contained the following items:-
- A pair of compasses
- A protractor
- A 15cm ruler
- Two set squares
- Some pencils (if you were lucky)
You’d proudly take your new set into your next Maths lesson, only to find you didn’t need it that day, and wouldn’t actually need it for weeks to come. The poor old geometry set then sat at the bottom of your bag for the next few months, until it was finally required. Scrabbling around in the bottom of the bag you’d find the geometry set, plastic lid broken and the contents chipped and scuffed, covered in mud from your sports kit. It was now next to useless…
…for its intended purpose that is. The pair of compasses was normally pretty sturdy, and the point made an effective weapon. The corners of the set square were also good stabbing implements, assuming they hadn’t broken off already, and the protractor could be quite an effective saw for cutting your mate’s giant pencil eraser in half as well. Ah, the innocence of youth, eh?
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What use is a 15cm ruler I ask you ?
I’m still using a solid 30cm one I got from WHS in my final year at school so that’s nearly 20 years old now
the bottom of the bag/covered in mud thing is just so true
[…] to be confused with the Geometry Set, which came with a little ruler, protractor, set squares and pair of compasses. Â These were often […]
In Guyana (formerBritish colong) most of our educational mateial came from England. We even sat for GCE O & A Levels. My first Geometry set was also a HELIX, except that my box was metal (tin ?), not plastic. My Geometry set also included a “blotter” to blot or dry out those ink marks. I don’t believe anyone uses those fountain pens anymore.
I remember using a fountain pen at school (that blotter would have come in very handy) but you are quite right Mohamed, it’s very rare to see them used these days.
That said, I remember the last two times I used a fountain pen. The most recent was signing the form for my daughters birth certificate, and before that it was signing the register when I got married!