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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.