Charlie Hancock, Class of '66 - The mystery photo is a mechanical drawing compass with accessaries. I still have mine. I've not used it often. A few times in the machine shop layout at the kite factory was all after the mechanical drawing class.
_____________________________________
Chip Smoak, ,Class of '66 - This week's mystery photo is of an engineer's implements which I am sure brought many of the fami-Lee to Huntsville and Lee. I guess those of us who's fathers were engineers owe a lot to these instruments.
___________________________
Bruce Fowler, Class of ''66 - Most Illustrious ORF Editor, the mystery photo of the week is a drafting set. Such consisted of pens and compasses for drawing technical figures such as blueprints (e. g.) They had to be augmented with various straight and curved line guides - straight edges, triangles, t-squares, french curves - a drawing surface, and all manner of accessories.
I seem to recall that there was a class at LHS on mechanical drawing or drafting but no details. I do recall that when I got to college all of the folks studying engineering had to take a class their freshman year on the subject and everyone claimed to roundly detest it. I believe it was a one credit hour course (semester hour system) and its time and resource demands were enormous for such a small credit course. Not only did these guys have to buy all this equipment and lug it about but they had to spend hours and hours drawing things. This was also one of those courses where neatness counted which probably explains why I stayed away from it.
As I recall only engineering majors had to take the course but I had to pick up the skills my junior year to prepare for the task of drafting figures and illustrations for my research project in my senior year. Happily I could buy a used set of tools from a flunked-out freshman and pick up what I needed to learn in a month or so of my spare time.
I was told that most engineers spent some time drafting when they got their first job after matriculation., sort of a rite of passage. Science degree folks didn't have to do that but in the late seventies I worked on a project to write drafting software for a Hewlett-Packard 9830 desktop computer.
_____________________________
Dink Hollingsworth, Class of '65 - The Mystery Item is a Mechanical Drawing set that included a couple different types of compass and a very difficult to use ink pen. I found my original set used in an elective Mechanical Drawing class taught by Ms. Osborn no long ago.
The classroom was next to or near the Wood Shop and close the the Home Ec kitchen that kept the hall filled with great scents.
__________________________
Jeff Fussell, Class of '66 - No mystery to me this week!. This is a basic Keuffel & Esser mechanical drawing kit including a compass, dividers, and pen nib. I never took mechanical drawing at Lee, but I bought a somewhat larger set called the “Favorite” for a typography course at UAH. Bolstered by generous, but undeserved, praise from Mrs. Hedden, I fancied myself artistically inclined. I found that the love flows less freely in college-level art study. Anyway, I did learn a few things and still have my K&E drawing tools.
___________________________
Michael Griffith, Class of ‘66 - This is a drafting set, and this particular one is oriented to ink drawing. The longer instrument at the top is fitted such that both legs of the compass have “needle-type” ends, and is utilized for measuring / setting distance between two points. The smaller compass, and the long pen at the bottom, are both fitted with bow pens utilized for drawing in ink. Care and practice were needed to successfully load “bubbles” of ink between the bow points (adjustable for line-width, by using the screw on the side, to narrow or widen the bow opening). Once the ink was successfully loaded, further care was needed to keep the bow pen at a 90-degree angle to the paper; leaning the pen too much would cause the ink to run out of the side, onto the paper. It is difficult to see in the picture, but both the large and small compasses should have exchangeable fittings for enabling the use of small pieces of graphite used to make “pencil” drawings.
My father was a design engineer at Thiokol and worked on a drawing board, with equipment such as this, for most of his working life. Growing up, I watched him many times and he gave me several large sets of instruments like this. Most of the sets from this era seemed to be from German manufacturers (i.e., Dietzgen). While at Lee, I naturally took the mechanical drawing course. My early attempts with both pencil and ink drawings were fraught with problems, as being left–handed, I had a habit of dragging my hand across what I had just drawn, and smearing it. I finally mastered the concept and took two more engineering drawing courses during my first year of college (enough to get a Summer job working with draftsmen on the Arsenal, at Hayes International). Now, this type of equipment would be deemed an antique, as all of this type of work is done by utilizing CAD (Computer Aided Design) software.
__________________________________
Arni Clinton Anderson, Class of '64? -The Item in the Mystery Photo this week is a set of drafting tools. When I left Lee I went to Hammond Technical Vocational High School in Hammond, Indiana. I took Architecture and Drafting shop for two year, 3 hours a day. This was part of my school supplies. I still have that set. and three more sets I've bought at garage sells over the years. Why? Who knows.
________________________
Don Blaise, Class of '64 - ’That brings many fond memories of my mechanical drawing classes at Lee. The classes were mostly guys but the gals we had were drop-dead gorgeous. The photo is of a mechanical drawing instrument set that we had to have for the class. However, the inking pen shown in the bottom-right corner was a pain in the A—to say the least. We had to use that to “ink” our pencil drawings using a really black, messy fluid called “India ink”. If you didn’t hold the pen just right it would smear and ruin your drawing. If I remember our teacher for the class was Paula Osborn.
____________________________
