26 October 2021
How Those Bad*ss Babylonians Did Design, B.C. (“Before CAD”)
On a hot, humid day almost 4,000 years ago, two Babylonian men stood in a field somewhere in Mesopotamia, shielding their eyes from the sun, as they thrashed out the details of their land deal. They had neither MicroStation®, Revit® or AutoCAD®, nor any modern means of surveying the land. Hell, they didn’t even have electricity. But they were bad*ss Babylonians, nonetheless, and way ahead of their time.
Maybe they went for drinks afterwards (most likely some kind of beer), as they sat and inked the deal. Well, not exactly “inked.” More like stamped the details into a clay tablet before shaking hands on the deal. How do we know about this event? Because that clay tablet has survived those two men, the countless generations that followed them, and the shifting of international boundaries over thousands of years.
They had neither MicroStation, Revit or AutoCAD, nor any modern means of surveying the land. Hell, they didn’t even have electricity.
That clay tablet clearly depicts the details of a piece of land that’s being sold. In wedge-shaped cuneiform and an accurate line drawing, the ancient tablet outlines the shape and dimensions of a field containing a marshy area and includes details of a threshing floor and nearby tower.
How do we know that it was a hot, humid day? Well, most of Mesopotamia was pretty arid, with hot summers and only sporadic rain, except in the lands bordering the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. Close to the rivers, the humidity was high and the soil fertile. Given that the land described on the clay tablet had a documented area of marsh, it is likely that it was close to one of the rivers and ideal for agriculture.
Residents of the “Fertile Crescent” soon discovered they could access water, year-round, by diverting river water and building canals and reservoirs to capture the annual snowmelt from the mountains. This ingenious thinking led to the massive settlement of Mesopotamia, giving birth to the “Cradle of Civilization.” Some of the most important developments in human history started in this area: the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops and the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy and agriculture. And drafting, perhaps, according to the clay tablet known as Si.427.
As if discovering an intact 4,000-year-old clay tablet wasn’t enough excitement for a day, as if the information recorded on it wasn’t mind-blowing enough, there was one more almost incomprehensible surprise to Si. 427: the tablet contained Pythagorean principles of trigonometry — Pythagorean triples, to be precise — a thousand years before Pythagoras ever lived. We reckon those Babylonians were possibly way more bad*ass than history has given them credit for. (We doubt, 4,000 years from now, that any data will be retrievable from a modern tablet by future archaeologists, yet the humble clay revealed its secrets. Remarkable.)
CAD initially emerged as a way to simplify automotive and aerospace designs.
“Once you understand what Pythagorean triples are, your society has reached a particular level of mathematical sophistication,” says Dr Daniel Mansfield, a mathematician from the University of New South Wales in Australia, who has done extensive research on the clay tablet in question. In case trig wasn’t your favorite thing at school, how can Pythagorean triples be easily explained? Pythagorean triples are three whole numbers in which the sum of the squares of the first two equals the square of the third — for example, 3² + 4² = 5². Simple as that. End of math lesson.
“You don’t just accidentally come up with trigonometry, you’re usually doing something practical,” says Mansfield. “Much like we would today, you’ve got private individuals trying to figure out where their land boundaries are, and the surveyor comes out, but instead of using a piece of GPS equipment, they use Pythagorean triples.” And record it on a clay tablet that survives for almost 4,000 years, to tell the tale.
Design, Post Mesopotamia
Today’s designer needs not much more than his computer and CAD/BIM platform, and possibly his favorite coffee at his elbow. No clay or cuneiform are required, no tramping through marshes and swatting mosquitoes. If he works from home, he may have chosen to forego traditional office wear in favor of a t-shirt and sweats. Hell, for all we know, he might be sitting there unshaved, in his underwear, with his thoughts racing a mile a minute, designing something wonderful for the world, like a true Babylonian.
In the 1950s, life for the working man was a little different than it is now. Actually, it was a lot different, particularly if you worked in the AEC industry. Modern technology, obviously, did not yet exist. Computers in the office were still non-existent. There was no glimmer of CAD or 3D printing or data-sharing through the Cloud. Yet, based on historical photographs, those guys all look really happy. What’s their secret?
It’s the same secret that some auto mechanics, mattress designers, massage students, MRI designers, dental students, airplane seat designers, coffin designers, pro bobsledders, chiropractic students and ladies-of-the-night share. You’ve probably guessed it by now. Pre modern CAD and BIM technology, a designer could lie down on the job and nobody gave it a second thought. In fact, it was practically a requirement of the job. The mere thought of spending a large portion of the workday, prone, is enough to make us feel mildly nostalgic.
Dapper Dan
Can you imagine trying to function in that 1950s pre-CAD/BIM world? It would probably play out along these lines: Imagine it’s Monday morning. You drop a fresh Gillette Blue double-edged blade into your safety razor, lather up your favorite puck of soap with your boar bristle shaving brush and shave your face to within an inch of its life.
In front of the bathroom mirror, you plop a dab of pomade into your hair and comb it into a laser-sharp part with glossy waves that would be the envy of Cary Grant. Sock garters are still a thing, so you’ll be wearing those. Next, slip into that crisply starched and ironed white shirt and your favorite cufflinks. Your suits are fashionably baggy, but appropriate for office wear in limited shades of gray, brown, beige, and navy, or some variation thereof. Nothing too flashy. A pocket kerchief, skinny tie, mirror-shined lace-up shoes, your weekday hat and your satchel-style briefcase complete your ensemble.
Can you imagine the inconvenience of lugging stone tablets to a meeting with the builders?
That briefcase, by the way, is practically a time capsule for the 1950s. Not only does it contain your favorite drafting pens and pencils, but nestled in that brand new Tupperware container that your wife ordered at one of those newfangled Tupperware parties, your Wonder Bread sandwiches await your lunch break. You’re a dapper 1950s man and you’re braced and ready for your week of drafting and designing.
Lying Down on the Job
Forget about ergonomic office furniture and any gesture of “form over function”. Back in the day, drafting offices generally contained row upon row of drafting desks, each stocked with the collection of tools the drafter required: set square, T-square, French curves, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, rulers, favorite ink nibs and so on.
Some projects, such as city planning, were executed on sheets of paper so large that the draftsmen were forced to climb up on the tables and lie down on the drawings just to be able to access them. To the modern CAD/BIM user, this may sound amusingly antiquated, but it still beats the heck out of two Babylonians pacing out property lines in the hot midday sun, smoothing over a lump of clay so they could draw on it when they finally reached agreement.
With the advent of paper, drafting became fairly straightforward and is luckily no longer dependent upon clay or stone tablets or papyrus. (Can you imagine the inconvenience of lugging stone tablets to a meeting with the builders?) For the majority of drafting’s history, it has been considered an art form, perfected by skilled designers, and essential to a culture’s infrastructure. We agree.
The New Babylonians: Hanratty & Sutherland, CAD Pioneers
For centuries, engineering meant getting out paper and laboriously drawing plans and designs by hand, as detailed in the work of Leonardo da Vinci in the 1400s.
The birth of CAD can perhaps be traced back to 1957, when Dr. Patrick J. Hanratty, a PhD from the University of California, Irvine, developed PRONTO while working for General Electric. PRONTO was the first commercial numerical control programming system.
In wedge-shaped cuneiform and an accurate line drawing, the ancient tablet outlines details and dimensions of the property.
Just six years later, in 1963, 25-year-old Ivan Sutherland wrote a program known as Sketchpad as part of his Computer Science and Engineering PhD thesis at MIT. Although Dr. Hanratty is often considered the father of CAD, Sutherland’s Sketchpad is commonly considered to be the ancestor of modern CAD programs and was also a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics in general. For example, the graphical user interface (GUI) was derived from Sketchpad, as well as modern object-oriented programming. With Sketchpad, Ivan Sutherland demonstrated that computer graphics could be used for both artistic and technical purposes — a trend that continues to this day.
During the 1960s, the engineers at Boeing, Ford, Citroen, MIT and General Motors plowed a steady stream of cash into the development of early CAD programs. The result was that CAD initially emerged as a way to simplify automotive and aerospace designs. Due to a sizeable lack of computer processing power (compared to today’s standards), early CAD was an expensive investment in terms of both time and money.
However, with a nod to Moore’s Law (that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years) and the rapid growth of electronics, CAD capabilities grew by leaps and bounds over the next half-century. The establishment of the Autodesk corporation occurred right in the middle of that growth spurt, but even then, the available computer hardware prevented CAD programs from becoming truly mainstream. Finally, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, the capabilities of CAD software became practical for application in engineering design.
Thanks to the arrival of modern CAD and BIM technologies, nobody’s had to slap a slab of mud together or crawl around on gigantic sheets of paper in recent times, though that gratitude is, perhaps, tinged with just a hint of regret.
Free Time is Me Time
Although modern CAD/BIM software is much faster than its predecessors, most platforms still have their quirks and those quirks can chew up your time and force you to work late. If you’re a MicroStation, Revit or AutoCAD user, you know exactly what we’re taking about.
You don’t have to get your hands muddy, lug around a clay tablet, or pomade your hair, wear a necktie and crawl around on a drawing table these days, but there are still ways to speed up your process significantly and free up time for the things you truly care about.
The tablet contained Pythagorean principles of trigonometry — Pythagorean triples, to be precise — a thousand years before Pythagoras ever lived.
At Axiom, we believe that at work, you should be free to get on with what you do best: design. If you want to forego the drudgery of repetitive manual tasks and save a ton of time, call a Service Consultant at 727-442-7774 to help establish which tools are best for your particular situation. You may prefer to visit us on the web and watch the neat video on our home page that shows how we can help you. Alternatively, MicroStation tools are here, Revit tools are here and AutoCAD is over here.
What will you do with all that extra time on your (unmuddied) hands?