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I held the role of (land) surveying draftsman, during the early 2000s years when the surveying profession was partway through the transition between manual drawings and digital processes. Being a young man then, I was our offices champion of new technology, but years of legacy projects still being tied off meant I had no choice but to learn and practice many of the manual skills. So my job was a weird mix of pushing everybody into the cutting edge of tech, then having to go and do some 50-100+ year old processes using special pens and papers and even chemicals. For example, the look up the 'diazo machine' -style of copier. Then imagine going into a small room with an armful of 30 x A1-sized engineering plans, and standing next to this machine for 2 hours slowly feeding in each page while surrounded by ammonia fumes. These days, the Wikipedia page says : "When making multiple copies of an original no more than four or five copies can typically be made at a time, due to the build-up of ammonia fumes, even with ventilation fans in the duplication room", but back then the working reality was more like "Junior staff member! I need four copies of these! <hands over armful of A1>". Much cooler was the Houston Instruments pen plotter. A machine whose vacuum bed (think of air hockey) held the paper down while rollers ratcheted it back and forth at high speed, and a robotic pen arm 'printed' out a plan by physically drawing it with pens. It automatically changes to different pens when it needs different line thicknesses (or even colours). All done at such a whirlwind of organised precision, it was a joy to watch. Another aspect of the manual age was the notion of Originals, or Master Copies. That is, for important documents, there'd be a master copy printed out on high grade stock - often archival grade, multi-layered Mylar or similar, for stability and durability. It could be hard work when a project made a late change, because at worst you might find yourself having to (e.g.) manually remove and extremely-carefully redraw an entire table of figures on a master plan. Sometimes just because row 1 of that table had changed such that the rest had to be moved down. The removal involved caaarrrefully buffing the ink off the page using a rotating electric eraser. If you put a hole in the plan by rubbing too hard on one spot, god help you. Doing that, then having to get 5 different signatures from high people in various offices redone on a new master copy, while a large project could be held up for weeks while delays and interest and costs accrue, would be considered a fairly notable faux pas. |
The pen plotter sounds phenomenal. I've used some modern budget friendly ones - but don't think they compare to what you describe here.