[max-ch]

Fantastic read!

In the mid-2010s, I was interning at the German federal statistical office. Some of the team assistants were there since the 1980s/90s and had still learnt to use those tools as part of their vocational training. They also showed me the tools and the instructions for drawing exactly aligned tables by hand and the resulting bound sets of tables with hundreds of pages. Completely mind-boggling how much time they must have spent on a single project, now all automated away.

[dougdude3339]

That seems like a valuable internship. I think the documentation in books about hand drafting techniques only contains so much information. How much knowledge was passed from professionals to apprentices alone? And does this knowledge disappear when they leave us?