Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 4: The Eversharp 4 Square
Day the fourth be with you! On that note, it's hard to think of a more quadratic pencil than the Eversharp 4 Square. This was a mechanical pencil of square…
Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 3: Nestler’s German silver screws
As promised, today's entry brings together Slide Rule Saturday and Mechanical Pencil Month in the hope of fostering a new spirit of love and cooperation between the two rival kingdoms.…
Sketchy calculation
As a bit of weekend fun, here's something called a Rechenstift - German for "calculating pen" - by the venerable Hamburg firm of Dennert & Pape, erstwhile inventors of the…
Fan scales
A recent discussion with Peter Hopp of Slide Rules fame, prompted by an item in the latest UKSRC Newsletter, finally encouraged me to photograph some of my fan scales. This type of…
Class of the Titans
A recent discussion about instruments named after mythological figures brought to mind the "Titan" Combination Compass, a simple design that aimed to provide a full drawing set in a box.…
Rotring Techniker-Zirkel II: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the drawing board
The name Rotring will forever be synonymous with the tubular technical pens on which their business was built, so it easy to forget that they were also highly regarded for…
An English Lotter?
The other day I broke my own rule of not buying any more of those turn of the century imported student-quality sets sold in vast quantities, primarily by Jackson Brothers, but…
Galileo! Galileo!
Not to be confused with Galileo's compass, the Staedtler Galileo could be considered one of the last radical redesigns of the modern compass, literally turning the usual fine-adjustment spindle concept…
Philden-Coyne Students’ No. 1 geometry set
School geometry sets have always been tangential to my main interest in professional drawing instruments, but occasionally something odd will catch my eye. This particular set attracted no attention on…
Rule Britannia
When it comes to patented rulers, it's difficult to concieve of anything more basic than this particular example. It consists simply of a pentagonal section ebonised rod with the end…