I start within the public culture of ‘industrial enlightenment’ around 1800 described by Jacob (1997) or Mokyr (2002; 2009), in which representations alongside exhibitions and lectures created a ‘meaning for machines’ that merged the ‘mechanical and the philosophical’ within a ‘broad agenda of improvement’ (Stewart 1998: 291). But, this 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. From the late eighteenth century through to around 1830 engineers, draughtsmen, and other groups entered into a competitive frenzy to invent mechanical drawing aids. These instruments were displayed in useful arts publications, both as objects described in words and pictures, but also through the traces of their use. ‘Machine drawing’ created distinctive marks that formed an aesthetic of technical representation in print.

Such images mirrored developments in technical representations in the workplace, but had deep differences. To those who see technical drawing as emanating from the ‘mind’s eye’ of the engineer (Ferguson 1977; Baynes 1992), illustrations are frequently, and misleadingly, characterised as peripheral or non-serious productions. 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.

When we start to examine how and where drawing aids, from rulers to ruling machines, were used, and how they worked, we can see that the full range of devices engineers were concerned with did not articulate at all clearly with the substantial feats of material production and construction we associate with the ‘heroes of invention’ (MacLeod 2007) which are supposedly the engineer’s unique field of operations. Furthermore, many devices were fiddly, temperamental, and as difficult to build as to operate. So, why did they bother to invent all this paraphernalia? Through considering the interaction between procedures for making and using drawing equipment, 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.