Traced map

[mikejee]

Possibly not in the right section, but I have found a hand traced map (on tracing paper) of central Birmingham from around 1940-55, reproduced below. I wondered whether it would have been common to go to all the trouble (many hours) necessary to make it. I know times were harder then, but it does seem a lot of effort to make.
Mike

 

[Bill Parker]

Hello Mike, interesting, I would put it pre 1947 as the railway companies are referred to by their pre grouping names, ie LMSR and GWR.

 

[Anne Watton]

Hi Mike, My first job was as a trainee tracer at Metro Cammell in 1968. It used to take hours to trace the drawings and I spent months practising printing clearly. When I changed to another Company they got me tracing the ordnance survey map of Bury St Edmunds, so many trees. I soon changed my career. Anne

 

[Morturn]

Hi Mike, My first job was as a trainee tracer at Metro Cammell in 1968. It used to take hours to trace the drawings and I spent months practising printing clearly. When I changed to another Company they got me tracing the ordnance survey map of Bury St Edmunds, so many trees. I soon changed my career. Anne

Very interesting, my mother in law was a tracer for Metro Camel too, apparently she had done this all her life.

She worked from home, doing ‘out work’ as I recall, amazingly skilful, until computer aided design (CAD) came about: there must have been a lot of people who lost their jobs to CAD.

There must have been a lot of people who did ‘out work’ too, what ever happened to them?

 

[BernardR]

Tracing was replaced where I worked long before CAD arrived on the scene. The improvements in Reprographics (Print Room) saw it dispensed with. Some Tracers retrained to carry out more original draughting; albeit updates or modifications rather than new design.