Visited the new AutoCAD museum exhibit in Des Moines and they got the plotting history all wrong

They claimed pen plotters died out in 1990 but I was still using one on a $12,000 commercial project in 2003, has anyone else noticed historical exhibits getting basic industry facts mixed up?

3 comments

3 Comments

wade2501mo ago

Drive me nuts how these exhibits treat history like a straight line instead of a messy timeline. My uncle's print shop still had a functioning plotter in 2005 doing architectural drawings for old-school clients. It's like when people say fax machines died in the 90s but every doctor's office still had one humming along ten years later. Real-world tech sticks around way longer than the history books want to admit.

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nelson.vera1mo ago

Actually, fax machines are still pretty common in healthcare even today, not just ten years later. My aunt works in a hospital billing office and says they still get faxes daily from smaller clinics that refuse to switch to encrypted email. It's not that people don't know about digital options, it's that regulations and old habits keep analog tech alive way longer than seems reasonable.

max2231mo ago

Buddy of mine worked at a tiny engineering firm outside Philly until like 2016 and they still had a clunky old plotter spooling out blueprints on that weird waxy paper. He said the new boss wanted to go digital but half the contractors they worked with refused to take PDFs, wanted something they could spread on a truck hood. @wade250 nailed it, my friend's old boss kept that plotter oiled and running just to keep those grumpy contractors happy, no one cares about the official timeline.