peira:

Christian Rohlfs:  Roman Builders (1867) via The Athenaeum

(via rhaegartargaryen)

fuckyeahjustinechenel:

Oh ya know, can’t have too many WIPs at once, so I cast on a wool/mohair beanie for my BF when he is working up north in the cold desert. (Taken with instagram)

(via knitwitsblog)

ohsoanthropological:

Fossil hunters in Ethiopia are excavating a mandible, or lower jaw, of Ardipithecus ramidus. A fairly complete skeleton of this individual, nicknamed Ardi, is 4.4-million-years-old. It lived well before and was much more primitive than the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton, of the species Australopithecus afarensis. Unveiling the Ardi remains this week, scientists said this was the earliest known skeleton of a potential human ancestor.

Credit: Tim White and David L. Brill

(via gwebarchaeology)

1986

AutoCAD Version 2.5 (Release 7)   June 1986

Between The Lines: All Things Autodesk and Technology

Shaan Hurley

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/autocad-release-history.html

c. 1980

Ellipsograph by Haff in transparent acrylic sheet with chrome plated rotating operating knobs. for use with either ink. pencil or a technical pen.

Drawing Instruments 1580-1980, Hambly M, 1988

c.1980

Late-20th-century specialist drawing pens by Haff all with plain ebonite handles. the blades made of stainless steel with hardened tips. (Right to left) : Broad pen with numbered settings on a thumb-screw from 0.25- I.20 mm thick: a curve line pen for lines 0.1-0.35 mm thick: a twin road or rail pen: a small fine-line pen for lines 0.2- 0.8 mm thick

Drawing Instruments 1580-1980, Hambly M, 1988

1968

HP Computer Museum

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=82

Pen Plotter

Name: 9125A Flatbed Plotter

jasonzimdars:

Lego graphic design department, 1962

1965

United States Patent Office, 3,179,089, Patented Apr. 20, 1965

The present invention relates to pencils and more particularly to mechanical pencils of the type used in engineering drafting.

In pencilling engineering drawings and the like, it is highly desirable to manually rotate the pencil while drawing a line to keep the pencil point sharp for a longer period of time.  This practice of manually rotating the pencil in addition to reducing the frequency at which the pencil requires resharpening, provides clean-cut lines of uniform thickness to improve the appearance of the drawing.

1963

Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System

Ivan Edward Sutherland

TX2 Computer

The Sketchpad system uses drawing as a novel communication medium for a computer. The system contains input, output, and computation programs which enable it to interpret information drawn directly on a computer display. It has been used to draw electrical, mechanical, scientific, mathematical, and animated drawings; it is a general purpose system. Sketchpad has shown the most usefulness as an aid to the understanding of processes, such as the notion of linkages, which can be described with pictures. Sketchpad also makes it easy to draw highly repetitive or highly accurate drawings and to change drawings previously drawn with it. The many drawings in this thesis were all made with Sketchpad.

A Sketchpad user sketches directly on a computer display with a “light pen.”  The light pen is used both to position parts of the drawing on the display and to point to them to change them. A set of push buttons controls the changes to be made such as “erase,” or “move.” Except for legends, no written language is used.

1959

The Calcomp 560 drum plotter … [the somewhat later 565 is pictured] … , introduced in 1959, was one of the first [commercial] computer graphics output devices

IBM sold the Calcomp 565 as the IBM 1627 for use with its low-end scientific computers. [wikipedia]

1952

The Rapidograph tubular-nib drawing pen, first introduced in 1952, the proto-type of several cylindrical-nib pens used with special free-flowing drawing inks. Various models were developed under the Rotring trademark. Riepe Werke. West Germany.

Drawing Instruments 1580-1980, Hambly M, 1988

Mid-20^th century

Set belonging to George McHugh, Engineer

A. G. Thornton Ltd, Techset.  Mid-20^th century.

The Graphos drawing pen, introduced in Germany in I932. The first modern technical pen, it is capable of twelve different line thicknesses. Alternative size nibs with twin blades are clipped to a holder whose black plastic handle contains an ink reservoir and feed. Drawing Instruments 1580-1980, Hambly M, 1988

top image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grafos_RB1.jpg

bottom image: Pelikan Graphos set belonging to Marco Zambelli, Architect, 1960s

The pieces and case were bought separately and assembled over time.

n-a-s-a:

Bright Planets at McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope

Image Credit: Mike Line (Caltech), Ed Mierkiewicz (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison), Ron Oliversen (NASA-GSFC)