My father worked as a draftsman as a subcontractor for NASA in Houston. I remember spending the summers helping him organize D and E size paper. When I was a freshman in high school I took a draftsman course and designed my own house. 20 years later I still have my finished blue prints which I scored a 99 on (chimney was off a foot on the plot plan). I will build that house one day.

I started out as a draftsman in Oak Ridge, TN in 1969 and was proud to have worked on the Apollo Lunar Sample Return Container (Moon Box) which was designed and built at my plant. I got to watch the evolution of drafting well past what is shown in the photos. Hand drawing was a craft and I admired so many older co-workers and their skills. Fond memories!

If US went to the moon with slide rulers and 8bit processing power imagine where we could be if we didn't focus on war for the past 50 years?

And of course, they were all men, except for one trailblazing woman in the last picture.

Saw a documentary last night about designing the Concord airplane. There were literally thousands of engineers and draftsmen drawing things. I can't imagine how they kept it all straight.

My dad worked for the BLM in the early 60s he would bring home his work occasionally. I wanted to take shop classes (1964) and was told "no girls." When I asked why, they said I might get hurt. "Even drafting?" No, not allowed. Funny, because when I went to college in 1969 majoring in engineering, drafting was required. So I'm taking this class, the only female, left-handed, and no prior experience - unlike the guys. The irony was not lost on me. I did manage to pull an A.

Back before they sucked out all of the fun in drafting and architecture.

I have actually laid on my belly drawing curves using a spline and 'ducks' like one of the pictures. My father started drafting at link-belt in Chicago. He would tell me that you didn't get your first pay raise until your lettering looked acceptable and everyone's was the same.

Man, I remember learning architectural drawing on one of those huge drawing tables. They were actually brilliant to use. And I also remember first learning Photoshop (version 2 or something) back in the mid 90s. Doesn't seem so long ago. Damn, I feel old.

This looks so much more sensual and fulfilling to me. Wonderful! Men with ties laying on huge drawings. And no customer from hell saying come on, it's just a few clicks, mail it tonight. Not everything was better - but definitely some!

My husband still works this way for our house project. He's having fun with it.

As an aspiring engineer this is really cool to look at.

In Junior High (Middle School), non artist kids filled up my art classes so I ended up in drafting and shop classes. I learned some pretty cool things that were still art. By high school, I got back into commercial art classes and I had some good skills the other art students didn't have.

The people who designed every aspect of our environment. No wonder it works best for white males.

The company I work for was founded in 1897, and as we move into solidworks I find myself hoarding some of the oldest paper drawings and glass sides when I run across them. It really is art. I honest don't think I have the skill to do that kind of work anymore.

In the Eighties, I worked for a civil engineering firm. I did plans and profiles in ink on mylar. We had two computers. One was for our secretary, the other (a Kaypro 2) was used to log the inventory numbers for our drawings.

Many minds working at the same time concentrated trying to perform their best effort.

Well I started on the board back in 76 being a contract mercenary. I worked on everything from electrical contractual, Nuclear power plant, Oil pipeline company, Power station construction, Gas station reconstruction, redesigning workflow for FAA complaint company, In my travels I had to use the board, VersaCAD, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks CADKey, MicroStation, ProEngineer, and I am now using NX. It has been quite a ride and it is not over yet.

That's what my dad did. He loved being a draughtsman. He hauled us all to Marrietta Georgia so he could draw for Lockheed making the first-ever 747. Also Phoenix working for Goodyear Aerospace, and New Mexico working for an unnamed employer... I remember the big table he worked off at home when he was moonlighting. We helped with the very simple stuff. He ended up retiring early to avoid learning AutoCAD, though at the time he was designing computer parts.

Well so much for photos of talented women workers - thank for absolutely nothing applicable to 1/2 your audience!

Love the ones who are literally lying on their work - while formally dressed!

Apparently AutoCAD allowed us to stop wearing ties...

You could do it all by yourself. Plot the property line coordinates to catch the surveyor's error using a 1974-era hand calculation costing $100 in 1974 dollars. Plot coordinates of the column line grid. Do it in ink so you eliminate the pencil smudge. It would all come within half a foot at 40 scale. Now erasing...that was annoying.

"back in my days finding a job was so easy, the youth of today is so lazy" welllll tell me more about computers taking away your jobs minimizing work effort, so that 1 person can do the job of 5 but gets still payed like 1 instead of having a better salary. tell me more about how nowadays you not only have to understand how a computers work but always need to be updated with the newest programs and apps to keep on track or you fall trough the grid of society.. tell me more about how less people there were 60 years ago. these pictures make me really sad..

Remember, heck I lived it! I became an architect cuz I liked to draw, not cuz I was good at pushing buttons. That first photo is great. It perfectly illustrates why architects still refer to busy times as being "a**holes and elbows," LOL... that's about all you saw when you walked into the room!

T-Squares and then Drafting machines

Rapido v1 :)

This is a lot more Efficient than using the computer. Rulers and pencils allow you to correct costly mistakes on the fly. Also it doesn't take $30,000 of electronics to design a building or a road. I can make a sketch of an intersection in fifteen minutes. With CAD it takes about two hours and there's actually very little you can do with it. God does not draw with straight lines and neither should you.

I used to draft with AutoCAD, but my company (a very large company - some 10k employees) decided this was a waste of my time and created a special department just for AutoCAD drafting. They offered me a position on condition that I move. I turned down the offer. Today, I have to draft out my designs by hand, on graph paper to... wait for it... send to the specialized department. Gotta love corporate America!

This was life in our first year of UnderGrad too, 2012, and surely still the same. Only for teaching though.

Wow

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You really need a side by side comparison of what an office looks like now. These archive photos also represent large scale projects and bigger offices so the point seems to be how much more efficient and less cumbersome we are now. Quite the opposite.A drawing set for an office or residential tower from the 1960s is a fraction of the size of what is being pumped out today. I speak from way to much experience in autocad hell. Also autocad has co-opted drafting - look at the cost of a license - architecture is a race to the bottom.

Mmmm, sweater-vests and bow-ties.

I used to draw little spiders webs on the slow Draughtsmans drawings.. :)

That's how they did it. We devoted a whole floor to it. Amazing how technology has evolved in such a short period of time.

I began working in the design office in an electrical/mechanical engineering company in South London in 1960 aged 15. By 22 I was working in Boston USA. By 24 I was married and working for UOP in Chicago and by 26 I was in Sines in Portugal working on the grass roots Sines refinery as a piping field engineer. By 29 I was back in London working on huge North Sea oil production platform in the Norwegian sector. In 1978 I moved to Oslo Norway working on the topsides designs of the Stafjiord B platform. In 1981 I moved to Perth Australia where I worked for the next 33 years in the Oil and Gas and resources sector. I started my own engineering design company in 1984 and built it into a very successful business. I moved back to Europe in 2012 and settled in Belgium. I am still working full time at the age of 74 on several tech start-ups and travel extensively around the world advising on tech. I plan on maybe retiring in around 2040. A wonderful career.

No idea why thousands of people should work in the same room just because there is no Autocad yet. :))))

The USS Missouri was designed, built and sailed in 39 months, most of it was designed on the fly while being built and today and equivalent with CAD would 5 years to design alone and another 4 to build so have we progressed?

Of these photos, I find the issue of equality more intriguing. Change the article header from 'People' to 'White Males'.

I worked my first drafting job in 1988 on the board. I did revisions on a few drawings on rag from the 1930s. They were amazing. the drawig skill was way beyond the latter generations.

I was a Boilermaker and all the drawing we worked to were much simpler than they are today but the tradesman at the time were taught how to read them and knew what they were doing but as a cad jokey, today I must take my hat off to them all

Drawings which were all my own design had my full signature in the bottom right corner. Those which were altered under instruction from above just had my initials. I don't think the boss ever noticed !