18 Jan 2019

19 Amazing Vintage Photos That Show How People Worked Before AutoCAD

We here at Bored Panda, really love finding some interesting facts from our past, preferably together with some vintage photos to illustrate it. This time we’d like to share with you how an essential profession – the drafting technician – looked like before computers began their reign. A drafting technician may work in many spheres – from architecture to manufacturing and is responsible for engineering drafts, architecture drawings, and house plans. To put it simply – no structure is ever built without a drafting technician.

Technological advances cause some professions to cease to exist, but in the case of drafting technicians, it just made their desks smaller and tidier. AutoCAD was released in 1982, and by 1994 as many as 750 training centers had been using it worldwide. Before, drafting required pencils, erasers, t-squares, and much more time. And the photos below really show it. Looking at them, you can almost hear the rustling paper. Now, architecture design, electrical and other drafters are mainly clicking their mouse and keyboard.

Scroll down to check out what the old days were like. As the saying goes – the more you know, the less you need!