I remember the Ames lettering guide - if fact I've still got the one I used and the one my father used. It had a steel holder for rotating the plastic with holes in it. Mine had the holder and the rotating piece all from plastic. The plastic on his has turned yellow or it may have been yellow in the first place! (I've still got his great drafting desk with drawing storage drawers that he made in the 40's!)
Remember working for the old Cal. Bridge department slipping a printed lined template behind the tracing or vellum paper. Worked pretty good. Later we got the vellum grid paper - still can buy that stuff today.
All of our college structural engineering notes had to be done on this stuff (1950's). Junior and senior year structural notes were done on 22 x 34 sheets divided into 8.5 x 11 pages - on grid vellum.
Then came along erasable vellums. We used to sketch our details and then paste them onto a 22 x 34 piece of paper already having the border printed. Used a KROY machine for the big titles and other stuff. All of my engineers were good drafters, so organizing the sketches were pretty easy. After pasting the stuff onto the paper, we take it to the local printer and have eraseable vellums made. Somewhat clumsy, but I remember putting about 8 drawings together in four hours.
Remember moving over to Acad as soon as I could. But transmitting the drawings was still a hassle. Sometimes it was more hassle to have numerous sets of drawings made at the local printer, signing the drawings, inserting them into big envelopes and running them down to the local FedEx box. (about 9 miles away). Remember once putting drawings on a Greyhound bus to only have them lost! Had to jump on a plane in SF and fly to Chino to deliver them on time.
Most everything goes by Pdf over the net these days.
JHG
