Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer is the autobiography of the British novelist Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1954. Slide Rule concentrates on Nevil Shute's work in the aerospace industry, ending in 1938 when he left the industry.

The book begins with an introductionary chapter which details Shute's childhood and upbringing, his school years and service during World War I. Shute came into contact with airplanes during his time as a student as Oxford, where in his holiday periods he worked at the DeHavilland aircraft factory.

The remainder of the book is divided into two parts. The first part is about Shute's experiences working on the R100 airship project at Vickers. The R100 project was the private counterpart to the Air Ministry's R101, in a competition designed to find an airship capable of flying the Empire routes to India, as well as transatlantic flights to Canada.

Shute worked on the R100 project as head calculator, the person responsible for overseeing all the calculations needed to design the airship. He was also present at the airship's maiden voyage to Canada in 1930.

The final part of the book is about Shute's experiences in cofounding and managing the Airspeed Ltd. company during the difficult 1930s, when there was a lot of competition and few orders. As Shute tells it, the first time the company made a profit was in 1938, the year he resigned as a director.