A Manual of Engineering Drawing for Students and Draftsmen

by Thomas Ewing French

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

Reviews

[Rossdavidh · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy of this book was the first edition (ninth impression), from 1911. Reading it over 100 years after it was written, I am not surprisingly not the author's intended audience. There may be fields where the author has in mind a readership in future centuries, but Thomas French was unlikely to have had a 21st century reader in mind when discussing, say, the use of compasses.

It is a fair question as to what possible merit there could be for me in reading such a book. I have no excuse to give. It was, however, quite pleasant to do so. The language is dated, but precise, and the various illustrations of, say, the proper way to hold a pen when doing proper lettering, were (unsurprisingly given the topic) well done.

There is, to be sure, something impressive in seeing the evidence in this book of a previous generation's ability to focus relentlessly on the task at hand, given our own current inability to focus for more than 10 seconds on anything at all. Reading this book had a calming and focusing affect on me, too, although I cannot claim to be able, as a result of reading it, to execute in a proper manner any of the techniques described. If I were to have the book at hand when attempting it, though, I believe I would find it sufficiently clear to be a great help.

I suppose that, more than anything else, that was why I read this book: to get a glimpse into what a professional engineer's work life might have consisted of in a time before smartphones, internet distractions, email, Slack channels, and myriad other ways to keep yourself from the task at hand. Much as gardening is not, for me, primarily a way to acquire food, but mostly rather a way to remind myself (at conscious and subconscious levels) of how we came to have food, this book was for me a way to disconnect from my current way of life and connect instead (however tenuously) to an older one.

[Andrew Volpe]

Acquired from my High School Drafting class, 1996

1966 Edition, originally 1911.

One of my "oldest" books, one that I have had for a long time.