(((Fifty-one years ago this 20th-century American science fiction writer wrote seems to be the first known description of a CAD system.)))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Door_into_Summer
'...a drafting machine, to be operated like an electric typewriter. I guessed that there must be easily fifty thousand engineers in the U.S. alone bending over drafting boards every day and hating it, because it gets you in the kidneys and ruins your eyes. Not that they didn't want to design – they did want to – but physically it was much too hard work.
'This gismo would let them sit down in a big easy chair and tap keys and have the picture unfold on an easel above the keyboard. Depress three keys simultaneously and have a horizontal line appear just where you want it; depress another key and your fillet it in with a vertical line; depress two keys and then two more in succession and draw a line at an exact slant.
'Cripes, for a small additional cost as an accessory, I could add a second easel, let an architect design in isometric (the only easy way to design), and have the second picture come out in perfect perspective rendering without his even looking at it. Why, I could even set the thing to pull floor plans and elevations right out of the isometric."
Robert A Heinlein, THE DOOR INTO SUMMER, Chapter 3
'But John could see the importance of 'Drafting Dan.' When I showed him how I could write my signature, recognizably my own, just by punching keys – I admit I had practiced – his eyebrows stayed up. 'Chum, you're going to throw draftsmen out of work by the thousand.'
"'No, I won't. The shortage of engineering talent in this country gets worse every year; this gadget will just help fill the gap. In a generation you are going to see this tool in every engineering and architectural office in the nation. They'll be as lost without it as a modern mechanic would be without power tools.'
THE DOOR INTO SUMMER Chapter 10
