for reference, and copies are only sent out to the men who have to assemble or erect and complete mechanisms. The second are distributed to the several shops and departments where sectional portions are being prepared, as pattern shop, smithy, turnery, machine shop, &c. General drawings are, as a rule, drawn to a small scale, ranging say from 18 in. to 1 in. to the foot; but details are either to actual size, or to a large scale, as from 112 in. to the foot or 3 in. or 6 in. to the foot.
A large number of minutiae are omitted from general drawings, but in the detailed ones that are sent into the shops nothing is apparently too trivial for insertion. In this respect, however, there is much difference observable in the practice of different firms, and in the best practice of the present compared with that of former years. In the detailed drawings issued by many firms now, every tiny element and section is not only drawn to actual size, but also fully dimensioned, and the material to be used is specified in every case. This practice largely adds to the work of the drawing-office staff, but it pays.
The present tendency therefore is to throw more responsibility than of old on the drawing-office staff, in harmony with the tendency towards greater centralization of authority. Much of detail that was formerly left to the decision of foremen and skilled hands is now determined by the drawing-office staff. Heterogeneity in details is thus avoided, and the drawings reflect accurately and fully the past as well as the present practice of the firm. To so great an extent is this the case that the preparation of the tools, appliances, templets, jigs and fixtures used in the shops is often now not permitted to be undertaken until proper drawings have been prepared for them, though formerly the foreman’s own hand sketches generally sufficed. The practice of turret work has been contributory to this result. In many establishments now the designing of shop tools and fixtures is done in a department of the office specially set apart for that kind of work.
The growing specialization of the engineer’s work is reflected in the drawing office. Specialists are sought after, and receive the highest rates of pay. A man is required to be an expert in some one branch, as electric cranes or hydraulic machines, steel works plant, lathes, or heavy or light machine tools. The days are past in which all-round men were in request. In those firms which manufacture a large range of machinery, the drawing-office staff is separated into departments, each under its own chief, and there is seldom any transference of men from one to another.
Although in the majority of instances designs and drawings are completed before the manufacture is undertaken, exceptions to this rule occur in connexion with the work of standardizing machines and motors, for repetitive and interchangeable manufacture on a large scale. Here it is so essential to secure the most minute economies in manufacture that the first articles made are of a more or less experimental character. Only after no further improvement seems for the time being possible are the drawings made or completed for standard use and reference. In some modern shops even standardized drawings are scarcely used, but their place is taken by the templets, jigs and fixtures which are employed by the workmen as their sole guides in machining and assembling parts. By the employment of these aids locations and dimensions are embodied and fixed absolutely for any number of similar parts; reference to drawings thus becomes unnecessary, and they therefore fall into disuse.
The mechanical work of the drawing office is confined strictly to orthographic projections and sections of objects. Perspective views are of no value, though occasionally an object is sketched roughly in perspective as an aid to the rapid grasp of an idea. Drawings involve plans, elevations, and sectional views, in vertical and angular relations.
There are a good many conventionalities adopted which have no correspondences in fact, with the object of saving the draughtsman’s time; or else, as in the case of superposition of plans and sections, to show in one view what would otherwise require two drawings. Among the convenient conventionalities are the indications of toothed wheels by their pitch lines only, of screws by parallel lines and by diagonal shade lines; and of rivets, bolts and studs by their centres only. The adoption of this practice never leads to error.
In the preliminary preparation of drawings in pencil no distinction is made between full or unbroken lines, and dotted or centre lines, and the actual outlines of the objects. These differences are made when the inking-in is being done. Indian or Chinese ink is used, because it does not run when colours are applied. There are conventional colours used to indicate different materials. But colouring is not adopted so much as formerly, because of the practice of making sun prints instead of the more expensive tracings for the multiplication of drawings. When tracings are coloured the colour is applied on the back instead of on the side where the ink lines are drawn.
The economical importance of the printing department of the drawing office cannot be overestimated. Before its introduction drawings could only be reproduced by laborious tracing on paper or cloth, the first being flimsy, the second especially liable to absorb grease from the hands of the workmen. By the sun copying processes (see Sun Copying) any number of prints can be taken from a single tracing. But even the fickle sun is being displaced by electricity, so that prints can be made by night as well as day, on cloudy days as well as on bright ones. Twenty minutes of bright sunshine is required for a print, but the electric light produces the same result within five minutes. Prints are blue, white or brown. The advantage of white is that they can be coloured. But the majority are blue (white lines on blue ground). All can be had on stout, thin or medium paper.
An innovation in drawing-office equipment is that of vertical boards, displacing horizontal or sloping ones. They have the advantage that the draughtsman is able to avoid a bending posture at his work. The objection on the ground that the tee-square must be held up constantly with one hand is overcome by supporting and balancing it with cords and weights. (J. G. H.)
DRAWING AND QUARTERING, part of the penalty anciently ordained in England for treason. Until 1870 the full punishment for the crime was that the culprit be dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution; that he be hanged by the neck but not till he was dead; that he should be disembowelled or drawn and his entrails burned before his eyes; that his head be cut off and his body divided into four parts or quartered. This brutal penalty was first inflicted in 1284 on the Welsh prince David, and on Sir William Wallace a few years later. In Richard III.’s reign one Collingbourne, for writing the famous couplet “The Cat, the Rat and Lovel the Dog, Rule all England under the Hog,” was executed on Tower Hill. Stow says, “After having been hanged, he was cut down immediately and his entrails were then extracted and thrown into the fire, and all this was so speedily done that when the executioners pulled out his heart he spoke and said ’Jesus, Jesus.’” Edward Marcus Despard and his six accomplices were in 1803 hanged, drawn and quartered for conspiring to assassinate George III. The sentence was last passed (though not carried out) upon the Fenians Burke and O’Brien in 1867. There is a tradition that Harrison the regicide, after being disembowelled, rose and boxed the ears of the executioner.
DRAWING-ROOM (a shortened form of “with-drawing room,” the longer form being usual in the 16th and 17th centuries), the English name generally employed for a room used in a dwelling-house for the reception of company. It originated in the setting apart of such a room, as the more private and exclusive preserve of the ladies of the household, to which they withdrew from the dining-room. The term “drawing-room” is also used in a special sense of the formal receptions or “courts” held by the British sovereign or his representative, at which ladies are presented, as distinguished from a “levee,” at which men are presented.
DRAYTON, MICHAEL (1563–1631), English poet, was born at Hartshill, near Atherstone, in Warwickshire in 1563. Even in childhood it was his great ambition to excel in writing verses. At the age of ten he was sent as page into some great family, and a little later he is supposed to have studied for some time at Oxford. Sir Henry Goodere of Powlesworth became his patron, and introduced him to the countess of Bedford, and for
