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Envelopes of Experience; a man from a different era
Topic Started: Mar 20 2012, 06:43 AM (253 Views)
big al
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Bull-Carp
Quote:
 
Petroski on Engineering: Envelopes of Experience
Comment - Henry Petroski, Professor of Civil Engineering, Duke University
3/19/2012

I can't remember exactly when my correspondence with Chuck Siple began, but I'm sure it had its origins in his writing to me about something in one of my books on design. And I expect that he was supplementing what I wrote, was providing an excellent further example of good or poor design, or was simply reporting on a discovery or observation that he made while reading or shopping. In any case, that is what I have come to expect from a Chuck Siple missive.

Chuck's hand-written letters are of the old school -- cursive and discursive. The salutations have calligraphic flourishes, and the closings have even grander and more expansive flourishes. In between, his small, tight handwriting for a long time was executed with a turquoise-colored ink in his fountain pen, though his latest seem to be in black ballpoint, but that has not diminished their allure. There are often postscripts and post-postscripts, and enclosures of clippings. But what makes Chuck's letters more than mere epistles is his frequent interruption of the prose with drawings -- of a recently encountered elegant, curious, or faulty design.

The drawings that Chuck makes are masterful, with perfect perspective and fine detail. When he is describing a process, he will provide a series of drawings, showing the step-by-step progression of the action. In a recent letter, for example, he reported with obvious excitement about his coming across at the supermarket of a self-threading sewing needle. He wrote that he was going to buy a pack of 10 and send me one, but the price was too dear for a retiree. Instead, he provided three drawings showing enlarged views of the needle's eye end showing the steps by which it was threaded.

Chuck has a clear talent for technical drawing. He is a retired patent draftsman, and like a lot of retirees he has continued to practice his craft in a modified form. Some years ago, when my son and I were applying for a patent, Chuck was kind enough to execute from our sketches the final drawings in conformity with patent office requirements, with which he was intimately familiar. In appreciation of his help, I sent him a pear-wood 30-60-90-degree drafting triangle that I had come across in an antique store. It was a thing of beauty, I thought, and I believed that he would not only see it as that but also might put it to use.

After he read my book on delivering newspapers, in which I tried to describe in words alone how we paperboys in the 1950s folded the papers so that we could toss (or "flip") them from our bicycles onto subscribers' stoops and porches, Chuck sent me a series of illustrations showing the steps he used in folding the papers he delivered as a boy. I reproduced (with his permission) Chuck's fine drawings in a subsequent article on the variety of folding schemes that had been used by paperboys at different times in different parts of the country, thus demonstrating how a single design problem can have many different solutions.

Whatever Chuck draws, the result is neat, clear, and interesting. His techniques are equally so, as a close examination reveals. The drawings are usually executed first in pencil, and then finished in ink. I hesitate to say "traced," because the ink lines follow rather than exactly overlay the light pencil ones. Sometimes, after the ink has dried, he erases the pencil lines. These are techniques I learned in mechanical drawing courses in high school and in college as an engineering student, and seeing them used by a master brings back fond memories of those days at the drafting board.

A letter from Chuck is hard to miss in the mail, for the envelope is always addressed with either elaborate calligraphic flourishes or fancy and whimsical artwork. He does not consider himself an artist, and so when he draws cartoons of people or animals he often traces them from some source, such as a magazine. He also employs a lot of color on his envelopes, as he does on the drawings inside them. He typically uses either colored pencils or watercolors; something that was commonly done in nineteenth-century engineering drawings, making the best of them truly works of art.

I often wonder whether the postman sorting our mail stops for a moment to enjoy Chuck's entertaining envelopes. They may be but small packages among the plethora of slick and heavy mail-order catalogues that clog our mailboxes nowadays, but they always carry the distinct mark of being hand-addressed and hand-drawn -- hand-designed -- and that alone makes them something to admire among all the computer-generated and personalized impersonal material. I know that I stop to admire a Chuck Siple envelope before I open it, and I open it carefully so that I can preserve it along with its always interesting contents.

With the near-ubiquitous adoption of computer graphics, a meticulous draftsman like Chuck Siple may be a thing of the past, but to me his eye for detail keeps him as perceptive a critic of design as he ever was. Though he has the hands of a draftsman, he has the mind of an engineer. Computer-generated drawings may be the new standard, but I doubt that any graphics program will ever become an engineer's pen pal.

Copyright © 2012 UBM Electronics, A UBM company, All rights reserved.


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It's always a pleasure to encounter a craftsman at work, whatever the field of endeavor.

Big Al
Location: Western PA

"jesu, der simcha fun der man's farlangen."
-bachophile
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
In 2001 I have attended a talk by Henry Petroski on the design of bridges. It was quite fascinating - he is a great speaker!
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
big al
Mar 20 2012, 06:43 AM
It's always a pleasure to encounter a craftsman at work, whatever the field of endeavor.

Big Al
Honest question:

Is it nicer to receive a letter like that in the mail than, say, one printed out in 12 pt Helvetica?

Many might not care anymore, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone claim that the Helvetica letter would be more pleasantly received.

This article is interesting because nobody writes letters like that anymore. Letters are certainly no longer hand-written, and even if they were, there's no way they'd be in calligraphy with drawings attached.

We all still appreciate craftsmanship such as this, but we don't practice it ourselves. I find that interesting.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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Jane D'Oh
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Fulla-Carp
But why no pictures? What a tease...
Pfft.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Beautifully designed and beautifully printed brochures and catalogs and junk mail are products of craftsmen too -- those of graphics designers working their crafts on desktop publishing software designed and coded by craftsmen skilled at software development, run on hardware designed by craftsmen skilled at computer hardware system design, made in expertly automatic assembly plants built by craftsmen skilled at high-tech manufacturing.
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
Axtremus
Mar 20 2012, 09:23 PM
Beautifully designed and beautifully printed brochures and catalogs and junk mail are products of craftsmen too -- those of graphics designers working their crafts on desktop publishing software designed and coded by craftsmen skilled at software development, run on hardware designed by craftsmen skilled at computer hardware system design, made in expertly automatic assembly plants built by craftsmen skilled at high-tech manufacturing.
As it happens, I live under the same roof with a graphic designer. She would find your comments hilarious.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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