In the nineteenth-century, mechanical drawings presented some of the most distinctive and widespread visual statements of the ‘machine dreams' of industrialization [1]. In Britain the genre of engineering drawing developed rapidly with little official training or direction; engineers and draughtsmen were self-trained in drawing, fashioning their own status in a competitive visual economy [2]. Technical representations in large manufacturing enterprises such as heavy engineering or civil infrastructure projects were not simply a means of presenting oneself to the general public, however, but functioned more directly as a means to immediate power in the workplace, a method of exerting control over subordinates at a distance. Distinctive styles of engineering drawing, well known from the work of various celebrated figures such as John Smeaton or James Watt, emerged within the period of ‘industrial enlightenment' around 1800; a public culture where representations alongside exhibitions and lectures created a meaning for machines that merged the mechanical and the philosophical under the banner of improvement [3]. This era of industrial mysticism and invention at the very end of the eighteenth century is the counterpart of the French experience of utopian revolution and encouragement of manufactures in the same period.
      Despite the utopian mission of ‘improvement,' the industrial enlightenment was not a jolly consensus; engineers were trying to build professional status as investigators in the rational mechanical science of construction and manufacture, aiming to fend off, variously, natural philosophers, other technical professions, and, increasingly, lower aspiring ranks within their own field. Beyond Britain, there was further national and military conflict that marred the universal cosmopolitan notion of a republic of science. Despite the rational stance promoted by engineers on both sides of the Channel, we see equally strong elements of chaos—revolutionary ideological conflict, economic blockade, and war—creating opportunities for technical professions.
      This article considers some surprising artefacts, drawing machines, which at first glance appear to be ludicrously at odds in their miniature scale with the substantial and heroic feats of material production and construction (as in bridges, road systems, or canals) that are supposedly the engineer’s unique field of operations [4]. Nevertheless, we see that from the late eighteenth century through to around 1830, engineers, draughtsmen, and other groups in Britain entered into a competitive frenzy to invent mechanical drawing aids. These instruments were displayed in useful arts publications such as the Transactions of the Society of Arts both as objects described in words and pictures, but also through the traces of their use in a very self-referential way [5]. In actual use, many of these devices were fiddly and temperamental, as difficult to build as to operate, prompting the question, why did engineers bother to invent all this paraphernalia? I argue that these toy-like devices contributed just as much as bridges or gargantuan steam-powered machines did to the self-fashioning of engineers and engineering by bringing together several spheres of operation—from the private office to the factory floor—through the medium of publication. Just as the professional engineers developed a range of literary practices—through reports, or popularizing accounts of their work—so they also acted as visual technicians, shaping the genre of technical representation [6]. ‘Machine drawing' created distinctive marks that formed the machine aesthetic in print, working in feedback with developments in technical visual communications in the workplace.
      To those who see technical drawing as emanating from the ‘mind’s eye' of the engineer, illustrations are frequently, and misleadingly, characterised as peripheral or non-serious productions [7]. But in fact many different types of mechanical engineers worked as visual technicians and were concerned with technologies of representation on paper, using and inventing drawing machines to manage the literature of professional presentation. While it goes without saying that engineers also devised much of the heavy equipment of industrial knowledge such as paper making machines and printing presses, this was work behind the scenes. With drawing aids, by contrast, engineers inserted their presence directly into the flow of knowledge. They supported their writings with new kinds of image-text combinations and they asserted new forms of drawing skill, where paradoxically the traditional hand craft of the artist was no longer of value. Engineers emphasized the connections between industrial invention, engineering, and printing. In publications that aimed to encourage the useful arts of manufacturing, printing served as a metaphor for industry. Printing appeared to the prophets of industrialization to enact the dream of exact repeatability in the production of multiples. Through the efforts of popularisers such as Charles Babbage, analogies made between printing and industrial production in the nineteenth century became well-worn figures of speech turning endlessly back on themselves [8].
      Engineers thought a lot about how to reproduce images both in the workplace and for publication. Exact copies were valued, because images had to be shared and distributed. Technical drawings had contractual status, setting out a promise to clients about something that was going to happen in the future, so draughtsmen aimed for fixed indelible markings that were as unambiguous as possible—for example through using conventional lines of uniform width. Unlike artistic drawing, technical drawing was intended to be a mechanical process that could be reproduced at will and by anyone—the most humble apprentice was expected to copy and reproduce the same drawings as the elite engineer. For these operations simple draughtsmen’s tools such as compass and ruler acted as the most basic reprographic machines, encouraging uniformity and discipline. Engineers also used print as a medium to display allegiance with communities of knowledge and skill beyond the factory or construction site. In the pages of the Transactions of the Society of Arts we see contributors moving around in a carousel of interchangeable roles that join on to other social networks, as inventors, engravers, or draughtsmen. The engraver Wilson Lowry for example, was a member of the Royal Society and a founder member of the Geological Society. The Transactions enlisted celebrity engineers such as Henry Maudslay and Marc Isambard Brunel, famous for their wartime invention of automatic block making machinery for the Navy, as referees to report on new inventions [9].
      Drawings for print and for production were two separate genres, different, but in dialogue. Mechanical engineers developed their drawing languages amongst related technical professions, and started that training in the schoolroom. Drawing was a means of professional expression with ruler and compass as basic mark making aids, supported and further elaborated with more specialized equipment, creating a focus on the mechanics of drawing where even seemingly basic and mundane objects like straightedge rulers could gain talismanic status [10]. At a simple level, engineers invented and sold drawing devices because they were entrepreneurs. There was an expansion in trade for optical entertainments in the late eighteenth century, developing alongside new workaday products to meet a market demand for surveying or military equipment, for example when David Napier or James Watt, better known for their steam powered engines, also developed perspective drawing machines, optical aids towards observational drawing. Here we see continuity of skills as well as networking, for many early engineers trained as instrument makers and developed their practice through activities such as surveying, cartography and engraving [11].