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The ICOHTEC meeting will take place in Glasgow, 2-7 August 2011, and we are 
looking for individuals interested in giving a paper or serving as the 
chair and/or commentator for a session on the history of technical 
drawing.  The deadline for submitting panel proposals is 31 January 2011.

Rationale.
Drawing played a vital role in industrializing Europe.  The mechanization 
of society demanded workers conversant in the "visual language" of the 
machine age: technical drawing.  Eugene Ferguson, Yves Deforge, Renaud 
D'Enfert and others have shown that spatial and visual thinking was 
fundamental to the new industrial order.

We propose shifting the emphasis of scholarship from a focus on the 
physical sciences and mathematics to the fundamental role of technical 
drawing (including descriptive geometry) in Europe during the first half of 
the 19th century.  Looking at technical drawing allows one to see inside 
the technological and engineering creative process as well as the 
day-to-day creation of new technologies and goods, whether manufactured or 
artisanal.  Products expressed bourgeois tastes as well as the 
interconnection of art, science, and manufacture, and technical drawing 
provided the visual language that made these possible.

We are open to any and all ideas for papers on any aspect of technical 
drawing in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century.

If you wish to participate, please contact the panel organizer, Andrew 
Butrica at [log in to unmask], as soon as possible, so that we can meet 
the 31 January deadline.

Andrew J. Butrica, Ph.D.
Research Historian

Voice: (301) 656-3486
Fax: (301) 656-3486 (please call first)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

"Il faut travailler dans notre jardin."
Voltaire, Candide.