Early architecture was much different than today

I recent­ly began think­ing about my ear­ly expo­sure to the archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sion and how prim­i­tive those days seem now.

I began as a sim­ple drafts­man in 1961 (Wow!  Has it real­ly been over 60 years?) at $40 per week.  I had left a job as a pho­to­en­grav­ing cam­era­man at which I was mak­ing $60 per week but had decid­ed that a career change was in order and I was tired of com­mut­ing to Lexington every day.

I had had only one draft­ing class in my first year of col­lege (1959), so had very lit­tle expe­ri­ence when I was hired. In class, we had used the old T‑square, which was only use­ful on a rel­a­tive­ly small board.  In the job I grad­u­at­ed to, using the par­al­lel bar was a vast improve­ment over the cum­ber­some T‑square.  The par­al­lel bar is held in a con­stant hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion by a sin­gle cord­ed cable that is fed through the bar in both direc­tions and then attached to the board at four cor­ners.  It’s a sim­ple but inge­nious method of allow­ing the bar to move and remain at the same angle at all times.

In those days, we pro­duced “real” blue­prints. They were copies of our draw­ings pro­duced by a print­ing process that result­ed in a print of white let­ter­ing and images on a dark blue back­ground.  When left in the sun for any length of time, they quick­ly fad­ed to unreadability.

However, orig­i­nal draw­ings were made on high-qual­i­ty paper or, on occa­sion, a linen mate­r­i­al that was much more per­ma­nent (and much more expen­sive) but required inked images. Using ink for draw­ing required a rul­ing pen and a deft hand to pre­vent ink “splotch­es” when too much ink escaped from the nib, which occa­sion­al­ly ran under the par­al­lel bar to be spread around on the draw­ing. Repairs were time-consuming.

Combined with the par­al­lel bar were tri­an­gles of vary­ing sizes, usu­al­ly 45 degrees or 30–60 degrees, as well as adjustable tri­an­gles. By com­bin­ing these instru­ments, one could eas­i­ly draw hor­i­zon­tal, ver­ti­cal, and diag­o­nal lines.

We also sup­plied our­selves with numer­ous tem­plates, cir­cles, ovals, squares, and plumb­ing fix­tures. The lat­ter were usu­al­ly avail­able free from the fix­ture man­u­fac­tur­ers. For curved sur­faces, we uti­lized French curves or a com­pass to draw very large cir­cles. Many stu­dent com­pass­es came with an arm exten­sion that, when attached to the base instru­ment, made it into a “beam com­pass.” Most of these were designed to be fit­ted with either a draw­ing lead or a pen nib for ink work.

Drafting rooms were usu­al­ly equipped with draw­ing boards some­what high­er than a stan­dard desk, and stools were typ­i­cal. Eventually, low­er desks and draw­ing boards became stan­dard, but the high­er boards allowed one to either sit or stand — and stand­ing was some­times more con­ve­nient when hav­ing to reach the upper lim­its of the drawing.

It was not uncom­mon for drafts­men (there were very few women in the pro­fes­sion at the time) to wear an apron while work­ing because the graphite from the draw­ing would often find its way onto one’s shirt.  When we wore ties to work, which was usu­al, we tucked them into our shirts to keep them clean.

Drafting pen­cils (lead hold­ers) held a piece of lead about four inch­es long, which was peri­od­i­cal­ly extend­ed by press­ing on the back end of the hold­er.  Leads came in sev­er­al degrees of hard­ness, from 4H (quite hard) to HB (very soft). They were sharp­ened on a small sand­pa­per pad or, if one was for­tu­nate enough, a man­u­al sharp­en­er.  It’s prob­a­bly hard to see in the pho­to, but one side of the sharp­en­er’s “spout” has been worn away by con­stant use.  The lead hold­er was insert­ed into the sharp­en­er and then used to rotate the top.  The lead with­in was sharp­ened on a grit inside the sharp­en­er, and the graphite left in the con­tain­er had to be peri­od­i­cal­ly emp­tied.  Woe unto him who spilled the container!

It was fre­quent­ly nec­es­sary to total dis­tances, which often entailed using frac­tions of an inch (I still believe that the met­ric sys­tem would have great­ly sim­pli­fied our work). The sim­ple cal­cu­la­tor of the day was an instru­ment called an Addometer.  This was a met­al box con­tain­ing sev­er­al geared wheels which, when turned in sequence, would add — and sub­tract — mul­ti­ples of feet, inch­es, and frac­tions of an inch (down to 1/8ths).  The wheels were turned by insert­ing a small met­al sty­lus into the appro­pri­ate hole and rotat­ing it like a tele­phone dial. Once 7/8ths of an inch was reached, the next turn would turn the adja­cent wheel to note an inch, and so on to feet and mul­ti­ples of feet.  Distances could be sub­tract­ed by rotat­ing the wheels in the oppos­ing direc­tion.  The device was cleared by pulling the slide at the low­er right-hand cor­ner, return­ing all the wheels to zero.

Today’s com­put­er draft­ing is a far cry from the prac­tice of 60 years ago and has dra­mat­i­cal­ly sim­pli­fied the tasks of the draftsper­son and archi­tect. Still, some of the romance and “hands-on” expe­ri­ence has been elim­i­nat­ed.  There is good and bad in all tech­no­log­i­cal advancements.