Colin Beames: Drawing Tools

"When I started in 1966, the drawing office was very much as they were for many years before that. There was still blue linen prints around but in those days, most of the drawings were on plastic and resembled a long row - 15 ft long generally - with long drawing boards with big t-squares. And then we moved into the revolution of using cut sheets and plastic pencils, K-pencils as I recall them. They didn't smudge and they were much more hardwearing but broke forever - every other line you had to sharpen it.

We then had the revolution of putting in drawing machines. We had a drawing machine which was hydraulically operated with a t-square running along rails which generally speaking went out of square at least once a day. You were supplied with spanners to tighten it up and you had to use an old plastic t-square to check it. Then we moved from using K-pencils into using rotary ink pencils, which was a challenge for those technological draughtsmen who could print very well. It wasn't so easy to print with a pen."