Showerthought: I found out the original blueprint for the Empire State Building was drawn on linen, not paper

I was reading an old trade journal from the 1930s (a client gave me a box of them, long story) and it said the main drawings for the Empire State Building were done on linen cloth. I always thought it was just heavy paper, you know? The article said they used linen because it was strong and didn't tear easy, and they could erase on it a bunch of times without it falling apart. It made me think about how we treat files now, just hitting 'save as' a million times. Back then, the drawing itself was this physical thing you had to keep safe. Makes you wonder what we're losing with all this digital stuff, even if it's faster. Has anyone else run into a really old drafting method that made you stop and think?

4 comments

4 Comments

skyler_kim3mo ago

Honestly sounds like a huge pain to work with. Tbh digital files are way better, you can't lose them in a fire or spill coffee on a server. Ngl I don't miss the old ways at all.

troy_ross3mo ago

But you can't accidentally delete a whole filing cabinet with one wrong click.

nina_hall1mo ago

I mean, you say that like it's a good thing, but honestly, I see it differently. One wrong click on a server or a bad update can wipe out your whole digital filing cabinet just as fast, maybe faster. At least with physical files, you gotta actually set something on fire or dump a cup of coffee on it, not just hit "delete" once and pray you hit "undo." Like, I've had a cloud service glitch and lose a whole folder of invoices before, no warning. Digital feels safer until it just isn't, and then you're really stuck.

king.lisa1mo ago

Oh man, I feel this. I used to do drafting in college and we had some old linen prints in the archive. They were still readable after 80 years, which is way more than I can say for some of my hard drives. @troy_ross is right that you can't delete a whole filing cabinet with one click, but I've seen people lose whole collections of digital files in one drive failure too. My advice is to always keep a physical backup of anything really important, or at least two different digital backups in different places. And if you do run into old linen drawings, handle them with clean, dry hands because the oil from your skin can damage them over time.