Technical drawing tools

Technical drawing tools include and are not limited to: pens, rulers, compasses, protractors and drawing utilities. Drafting tools may be used for measurement and layout of drawings, or to improve the consistency and speed of creation of standard drawing elements. The tools used for manual technical drawing have been displaced by the advent of the personal computer and its common utilization as the main tool in computer-aided drawing, draughting and design (CADD).

The ancient Egyptians are known to have used wooden corner rulers. Ancient Nuragic people in Sardinia used compasses made of bronze, like the one displayed in showcase 25 in the Nuragic department of the National Archeological Museum G. A. Sanna in Sassari. In ancient Greece, evidence has been found of the use of styli and metal chisels, scale rulers and triangle rulers. Excavations in Pompeii have found a bronze tool kit used by the Romans, which contained triangle rulers, compasses and a ruler to use with a pen.

Although a variety of styli were developed in ancient times and were still being used in the 18th century, quills were generally used as the main drawing tool. Styli were also used in the form of ivory or ebony pencils.

Protractors have been used to measure and draw angles and arcs of a circle accurately since about the 13th century, although mathematics and science demanded more detailed drawing instruments. The adjustable corner ruler was developed in the 17th century, but a feasible screw-tightened version not until the 1920s.

In the 17th century, a stylus that could draw a line with a specific width called a ruling pen was developed. The stylus had two curved metal pieces which were joined by a screw. Ink was trickled between the blades, from which it flowed evenly across the paper. The basic model was maintained for a long time, with minor modifications, until the 1930s when the German technical drawing pens came to the market.

Artists (including Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, Nicholas Bion and George Adams) generally made drawing tools for themselves. Industrial production of technical drawing instruments started in 1853, when Englishman William Stanley (1829–1909) founded a technical manufacturing company in London. Even then, however, most tools were still made by hand.

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Wikipedia