Imagine, you are a convict, recently arrived in Australia. The colony is not very old yet, and you know there will be a lot of work to come, making the buildings which will be needed. You were amazed to be singled out from the convicts to help plan the new buildings which will be needed to make the colony great, but you were one of only a few who knew how to use a pen well. They have even give you access to drafting equipment and the best drafting pen you think you have ever used!
When I took this ruling pen to show the children, their reactions were hilarious. They had absolutely no idea what the pen was or what it would be used for, but their guesses were both creative and funny. Some suggested the pen was a set of adjustable tweezers, one suggested that it was for pulling the meat out of lobster claws and several thought it was for torture (namely, to pull nails off). They were surprised to discover it was something as mundane as a pen!
The pen was used for a type of drawing called drafting. Essentially, drafting involves descriptive drawing, often in plan form, of everyday things. One of its' most common uses is in designing buildings, or even drawing maps, but drafting is used in designing just about everything we use. Although there are many contenders for the worlds oldest profession, drafting is the only one which can actually be documented. Even the 'cavemen' drew simple illustrations of their lives on the walls of caves and we can learn a lot about them from these drawings.The oldest piece of drafting as we know it comes from Babylon and is a drafting board with temple plans on it from about 3000 BC.
The main changes in the history of drafting actually came thousands of years ago, and little has changed since. The biggest step forward came about when the Chinese and Egyptians created paper, like rice paper and papyrus, which could be used for drafting. This meant that the pictures moved from walls of buildings and caves to paper and of course, made the drawings portable. In the Middle Ages vellum was used as the 'paper' for drafting. The equipment used with drafting, including rulers, has also changed little, with sets of drafting tools found in Pompeii! Originally, the pens used with drafting would have been made of wood, ivory, reed or bone, but in the Middle Ages quills made of feathers were also used. Later, a pair of callipers, held at a defined distance would be used for drawing lines, and the pen I showed the children is not really very different from this principle. The pen I showed them is a ruling pen, a type of drafting pen invented in the 1600s. It has a screw which adjusts the width of the line by moving the two shaped metal tips closer or further apart and ink, which is dripped in between the two points, flows across the page at a defined rate. These pens were used extensively until the 1930s for drafting, but then fountain pens and other technical pens started to take over. You can still buy modern ruling pens, from specialist pen shops.
