How did they made the old manuals or magazines sketches?

[neazoi]

Such nice sketches in olr magazines and manuals... How did they make them? Obviously there were no computers capable back then but this seems almost a handrawn work, setting aside the almost perfect representation. Did they really have people sketching them? The amount of work that a product manual needed for example, seems amazing.

 

[KlausST]

Hi,

I guess they were mainly hand drawn.
And for they used transparent foil with printed patterns like hatches, brick walls,... and the one that is used here as "bottom of chassis"

Klaus

 

[betwixt]

Yes, all hand drawn by experts with steady hands.
Even complex double sided PCB layouts were made with sticky dots and adhesive black tape on a transparent sheets!

Brian.

 

[wwfeldman]

draftsmen and artists

my 1970 E&M (lorrain & corson 2nd edition) book has some really nice, hand drawn, figures
i think they are a lot better than the color stuff you get today using computers
the art of drawing figures is dying

January 1981
black and white Nexus comic book used zip-a-tone to provide various tone effects

1974 Zipatone Catalog — The Peculiar Manicule

Cover and swatches from a 1974 Zipatone catalog. Shading films were not unique to Zipatone, but as the leaders in the field, their catchy name has become synonymous with these types of pressure-sensitive pattern sheets. I scanned and uploaded the swatches rather large so that they can be used in Pho

www.peculiarmanicule.com

 

[crutschow]

Yes, before computers, virtually every figure was either hand-drawn or a photograph.
There were a lot of artists who could do amazing drawings.

When I was in school I took a semester mechanical drafting class (mandatory for engineering students).
I wasn't real good at it, but it was interesting to learn the various techniques such as how to draw various (accurate to scale) views of the same object.

At my first job there were a dozen draftsman that did all the mechanical and electrical diagrams/schematics for the things we built.

 

[dpasek]

Everything was hand drawn by draftsmen and illustrators. There were rooms full of people sitting at drafting tables making pen and ink drawings on mylar film. The Heath Company (Heathkit) had a large staff of illustrators in their manuals department.

 

[ziphren]

I have a book on how to draw like that. "A Manual of Engineering Drawing for Students and Draftsmen" by Thomas E. French & Charles J. Vierck 1953. 52-13455

A manual of engineering drawing for students and draftsmen; 1911. – Present&Correct

 

[Audioguru]

In the '70ies I scribbled my schematic then my pretty young draftslady printed it neatly and blueprinted it.

 

[dick_freebird]

ME101 was an engineering drafting course which taught mechanical engineers how to communicate with the world. As a baby EE I took it too. Still have the case full of squares, curves and detail element templates (have lost track of the T-square but I liked graph paper better anyway).

 

[wwfeldman]

no parallel rule?

drawing the plans for the titanic

Photo: Harland & Wolff's Drawing Room W/Titanic Sketch, Belfast, Early 1911 • $5.99

PHOTO: HARLAND & Wolff's Drawing Room W/Titanic Sketch, Belfast, Early 1911 - $5.99. FOR SALE! -The Harland & Wolf Shipyard's Main Drawing Room-Quite a rare view of the Harland & Wolf Shipyard's Main Drawing Room in early 1911, a few months before construction of the Titanic began. This was the...

picclick.com

 

[Easy peasy]

 

[Warpspeed]

This is done even today in many types of automotive or mechanical repair manuals.
I believe they first take a photograph, then a graphic artist traces out the most relevant parts with a transparant overlay over the photograph.
Similar thing with "exploded" parts diagrams. All hand drawn.
CAD is good, but a lot is still done by hand.