You know you're getting old when...

• When you were first introduced to Rotring and wondered, "What will they think of next?"

Mike Davenport

• You can remember when you could tell whose work it was by the style of the lettering.

Dana Damren

• You know what blue pencils were used for. (making marks that wouldn't reproduce on the dyelines. Ed)

Dana Damren

• You can remember the first time you heard the word "ergonomics" (but didn't really understand what it was all about).

Dana Damren

• You know that vellum isn't tracing paper and that Mylar wasn't always used just for toy balloons.

Dana Damren

• The old roll of drafting tape in the back of your desk drawer doesn't have any "stick" left on it.

Dana Damren

• You know what an eraser tastes like and why you'd want to lick it in the first place.

Dana Damren

• Inkwells holding a bottle of india ink had a "pedal" allowing you to fill your ruling pen using only one hand.

Paul Ottens

• How to rub down a scratched erasure on drafting linen with a piece of soapstone.

Paul Ottens

• Extracting square roots on a 100-key rotary calculator by the "ding method".

Paul Ottens

1/64=0.0156
1/32=0.0312
3/64=0.0468
1/16=0.0625
5/64=0.0781
3/32=0.0937
7/64=0.1093
1/8=0.125
9/64=0.1406
5/32=0.1562

• The decimal equivalents for fractions pasted to the outside of your slide rule case.

Paul Ottens

• How to use the "folded" scales on your slide rule.

Paul Ottens

• How to keep track of the decimal point on your slide rule.

Paul Ottens

• 10-place Trig and Log table books.

Paul Ottens

• Draughting was a design skill - Drafting was what law clerks did

Craig  Murray

• When you shaded areas of drawings by flipping them over and rubbing pencil shavings on them with a tissue.

Craig  Murray

• Your tongue is permanently tattooed with black dots from tapping the pen nibs against them

Craig  Murray

• You can still taste eraser and know that when you die there must be 5lbs of it hidden somewhere inside you

Craig  Murray

• You can write legibly and people comment on the cool writing style you have.

Craig  Murray

• The first mouse you had was a white cloth bag filled with powdered eraser.

Craig  Murray

Back to Page 1 >>>