This is just a long list, with notes. Where possible I've included digital reprints - but many of these items (especially newer ones, and ASME and ISO standards) are available only as physical books (or often costly digital books). I've left out some of the minor (typically online and probably transient) sources listed in the individual bibliographies for the various drafting Notebooks.
For paths through this material, see Threaded or Themed Reading Notes. See that Notebook as well for pointers to collections of technical illustrations and engineering drawings.
{Adams 1908} Adams, Charles L. Mechanical Drawing Technique and Working Methods, for Technical Students. Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Co., 1908.
Note: The American standard for technical drawing are maintained by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in their "Y14" series (some of these are in turn adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), so you'll see them called both ASME and ANSI standards). Some Y14 standards are "basic," while others are "specialty"; the list of which is which may be found in The ASME Y14 Policies , a copy of which is online at the ASME website.
{Y14.1} ASME. Y14.1M. Decimal Inch Drawing Sheet Sizes and Format. NY: ASME, [various revisions].
Editions include:
{Y14.1M} ASME. Y14.1M. Metric Drawing Sheet Sizes and Format. NY: ASME, [various revisions].
Editions include:
Unlike some other standards (e.g., Y14.2M-1992), where the 'M' simply meant that the standard was compatible with both inch and metric units, the 'M' in Y14.1M does mean that it is specifically metric, not inch.
{Y14.2} ASME. Line Conventions and Lettering. NY: ASME, [various revisions].
Editions include:
Y14.2 replaced Y14.2M. The 'M' as used in this instance had merely indicated that the standard was compatible with metric usage, not that it was exclusively metric; I believe that this is now considered superfluous.
The table of line widths in in Y14.2M - 1979 has been reprinted in {Madsen 1991}, p. 122.
{Y14.5} ASME. Dimensioning and Tolerancing. NY: ASME, [various revisions].
This is the basic reference for Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing. Editions include:
The 'M' as used in this instance had merely indicated that the standard was compatible with metric usage, not that it was exclusively metric. So the Y14.5M editions apply to both inch and metric drawings. The 'M' has been eliminated from the code since the 2009 edition.
{Y14.42} ASME. Digital Approval Systems. NY: ASME, [various revisions].
Editions include:
This standard has been consolidated into Y14.100-2013, Engineering Drawing Practices.
{Y14.100} ASME. Y14.100. Engineering Drawing Practices. NY: ASME, [various revisions].
Editions include:
{Y14 Policies} The ASME Y14 Policies. NY: ASME, 2007-2013.
Online at: https://cstools.asme.org/csconnect/FileUpload.cfm?View=yes&ID=24194
"ASME Y14 Policy Number One: Ground Rules for Placement of New or Revised ASME Data." (2007-05-04). This Policy is useful particularly because it identifies the Y14 standards which are "basic" as opposed to "specialty."
"ASME Y14 Policy Number Two: Boilerplate Text for the Citation of Reference in Y14 Standards." (2007-05-04).
"ASME Y14 Policy Number Three: Y14 Standard Writing Conventions." (2013-10-10).
{Baynes & Pugh 1981} Baynes, Ken and Francis Pugh. The Art of the Engineer. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1981. Guildford, UK: Lutterworth Press, 1981.
Copyright is 1981 by Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd.
{Booker 1963} Booker, Peter Jeffrey. A History of Engineering Drawing. London: Chatto & Windus, 1963.
As far as I know, this is the only comprehensive history of this subject which was written originally in English.
{Ching 1979} Ching, Francis D. K. Architecture: Form, Space and Order. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979.
Ching's books are marvels. This one is, in my opinion, his central volume. It's "about" architecture rather than drawing per se, but it approaches it through drawings. It contains one of the best general explications of the notion that points move to form lines move to form planes move to form spaces.
{Ching 1985} Ching, Francis D. K. Architectural Graphics. Second Edition NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985.
{Ching 1990} Ching, Francis D. K. Drawing: A Creative Process. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.
This is what you get when someone as good at drawing as Ching puts his mind to a book on the subject of drawing itself.
{Dantzic 1999} Dantzic, Cynthia Maris. Drawing Dimensions: A Comprehensive Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999.
A good general academic beginner's book on drawing, notable because it contains several studies after the methods of Josef Albers.
{Feldhaus 1953} Feldhaus, Franz Maria. Geschichte des technischen Zeichnens. (Wilhelmshaven, West Germany: Franz Kuhlmann KG, 1953.) Second edition in 1959.
{Feldhaus 1960} Feldhaus, Franz Maria. The History of Technical Drawing. NY: [?], [1960-1963]
This is a translation of Geschichte des technischen Zeichnens (1959 second edition). As I search for it today, I find no copies for sale. It is listed in only one library (the Linda Hall Library, a specialized engineering library), closed-stack. The bibliographic information for it at the Linda Hall Library is incomplete. Apparently it was published as a part of the "Graphic Science" series some time between October 1960 and May 1963 by an unspecified publisher in New York.
{Giesecke} Giesecke, Frederick E. et. al. Technical Drawing. [many editions] [location?]: Technical Book Co., 1933. NY: The Macmillan Company, 1936 - 1991. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall / Pearson PLC, 1997 - present.
In the 20th century, each major technical publisher had its own drafting textbook, maintained over many decades by a series of authors. Giesecke's was Macmillan's. It is my favorite, not necessarily because it was the best (though I think at times it was) but because it was the first one that I discovered.
Here's a list of the editions (excluding "custom" editions) together with a few of the associated workbooks.
All editions since at least 1936 have had their copyright renewed; the entire series remains in copyright. Any edition up to and including the 5th (1967) is worth acquiring.
(Should you wish to acquire a particular early edition, please be aware that in this era where online booksellers do not necessarily know anything about books they will frequently cite only an early copyright date (typically 1936) and not the edition - regardless of the edition.)
I have the entire run with the exception of the Preliminary, 1st, 10th, 12th - 14th, and "custom" editions, and two editions of the workbook (1934, 1967). You can trace the rise and fall (and current zombie-like resurrection) of American industry through a series such as this. It reached a high point with the 3rd (1940) and 4th (1958) editions (though I have a fondness for the 2nd of 1936). It fell to a ghastly low by the 6th (1974), along with aesthetics of the period in general. By the 9th edition (1991) it was burdened with instantly obsolete "gee whiz this is a computer" material. With the 10th edition (1997) the series was sold to Prentice-Hall. They've increased the pace of "new" editions to match the perception that our world is changing more rapidly, and have recycled material into various "custom" editions under the imprint of their corporate owners, Pearson PLC.
{Gettings 1969} Gettings, Fred. Techniques of Drawing. NY: Mayflower Books, 1969.
A good, approachable beginner's book on drawing.
{Guptill & Meyer} Guptill, Arthur L., Ed. Susan E. Meyer. Rendering in Pencil NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1977.
A posthumous combination of Sketching and Rendering in Pencil (1922) and Pencil Drawing Step-by-Step (1949). The present title better describes it, as it is a collection of techniques for using pencils rather than a general textbook on drawing.
{ICS Drawing} The International Correspondence School (which still exists) began in the late 19th century with a column in the journal Colliery Engineer and Metal Miner. It had a relatively complex history during the 1890s, but by the first decade of the 20th century was operating successfully as the ICS, with the International Textbook Company as an imprint for publishing. During these and the next few decades they produced instructional booklets for their classes which remain some of the best ever written on the subjects. These booklets appeared originally in stapled softcover format, but were collected into various themed hardbound volumes. These hardcover books are a technical historian's dream and a bibliographer's nightmare, because the booklets were collected into books in a varied and inconsistent manner over a period of decades. Some of these bore coded edition numbers (in at least two formats, one numeric and one alphanumeric); others did not. The only way to know which book you really have is to examine not the spine title or the title on the title page, or even the list of titles of incorporated booklets given on the title page, but the often lengthy list of copyrights of all of the included booklets.
{Hambly 1988} Hambly, Maya. Drawing Instruments: 1580-1980. London: Sotheby's Publications, 1988.
If you're reading this, it's likely that you'll agree that drawing instruments are some of the most beautiful things ever created. This is the best modern general study of them that I know of.
{Jackson 1975} Jackson, Jim. Seeing Yourself See: Eye Exercises for Total Vision . NY: Saturday Review Press / E.P.Dutton, 1975.
A most curious book on the process of becoming aware of one's own vision. Or the realization that at every moment your eyes are open you're seeing a good bit of your own nose without ever perceiving it.
{Juster 1963} Juster, Norton. The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics . NY: Random House, 1963.
Charming beyond measure.
{Klee 1925} Klee, Paul. Pedagogical Sketchbook. (1925) Trans. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy. London: Faber and Faber, 1953.
A Bauhaus view of line as motion (active, middle, and passive).
{Lefèvre 2004} Lefèvre, Wolfgang, ed. Picturing Machines: 1400-1700. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 978-0262122696, 354pp.
{Lockard 1973} Lockard, William Kirby. Design Drawing. [various editions since 1973]
I'd say that Lockard's Design Drawing is in the "must read" category for anyone making a drawing of something which will be made or used, or anyone making something which will be made or used (in the making of which a drawing will be useful). Lockard posits two kinds of drawing as extremes: drafting as a purely mechanical process and art as a purely expressive act. Acknowleding both, he argues for a third kind of drawing which sits between them, but which serves its own purposes: "design drawing," or drawing as an integral part of the design process. He says it all much better, so I won't go on here. It's a book of the "here, read this" type.
Editions include:
{Lupton MDT} Lupton, Ellen. "Modern Design Theory." http://www.designwritingresearch.org/essays/modtheory.html
{Madsen 1991} Madsen, David A., Terence M. Schumaker, J. Lee Turpin, and Catehrine Stark. Engineering Drawing & Design. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar, 1991.
This source is useful because it reprints the illustration of "STANDARD DRAWING SHEET SIZES" from ASME-ANSI Y14.1 - 1980.
{Madsen 2012} Madsen, David A. and David P. Madsen. Engineering Drawing & Design. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar / Cengage Learning, 2012.
{Moholy-Nagy 1947} Moholy-Nagy, L. Vision in Motion. Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947.
This volume describes the objectives and techniques of the "New Bauhaus" founded by Moholy-Nagy in Chicago several years after the dissolution of the Bauhaus by the Nazis in 1933. It is the successor to his earlier volume The New Vision, which did much the same, more briefly, for the original Bauhaus. On p. 96-97 of the present volume Moholy discusses the exercises in mechanical drafting at the New Bauhaus.
Myers, Ron, John Cargile and Dale Schneider. Autodesk Inventor R9: Inside and Out. Flower Mound, TX: CrWare 2004.
Nelms, Henning. Thinking with a Pencil. (1957) Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1981.
An unusual volume indeed.
Pearce, G. F. Engineering Graphics and Descriptive Geometry in 3-D. Somewhere in the Frozen North: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd., 1977.
This is a marvellous book, regrettably out of print for decades. I checked it out of the library because it has a good section on "short-range photogrammetry," or the reconstruction of 3-dimensional models from 2-dimensional photographs. I thought the "3-D" views, to be seen through supplied red/green spectacles, were just novelties. Then I tried them. Wow. They really work. They're an astonishingly good way really to see drawings in three dimensions.
{Petroski 1989} Petroski, Henry. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance . NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
As marvellous in its thoughfulness as in its research.
{Sutherland 1963a} Sutherland, Ivan Edward. Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System. M.I.T. Doctoral Dissertation, January 1963. Reprinted (with a new preface by Alan Blackwell and Kerry Rodden) as University of Cambridge [UK] Computer Laboratory Technical Report [ISSN 1476-2986] No. 574 in Sept. 2003. UCAM-CL-TR-574.
This is Sutherland's original dissertation on Sketchpad. All CAD starts here. It is online at the University of Cambridge Technical Reports site as http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.pdf
{Sutherland 1963b} Sutherland, Ivan Edward. Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System. Proceedings of the AFIPS Spring Joint Conference Detroit, MI May 21-23, 1963, pp. 329-346.
An early presentation by Sutherland on Sketchpad. This is or was online at http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/sketchpadamanmachinegraphicalcommunicationsystem
{Sutherland 1986} Time-Life Books. Understanding Computers: Computer Images ([NY?]: Time-Life Books (Time, Inc.), 1986)
This is a brief chapter on Sutherland and Sketchpad, in a book for a popular audience. A scan of this is or was online on http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/resources.html at http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/PDFs/Interactive-Sketchpad.pdf
{MIL-STD-100F} US Dept. of Defense. MIL-STD-100F. Department of Defense Standard Practice for Engineering Drawings 1996-09-09.
Online at: http://www.everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD+%280100+-+0299%29/MIL-STD-100F_3123/
Since this document is in the public domain in the US by law, here's a local copy:
[click image to view larger]
{MIL-STD-100G} US Dept. of Defense. MIL-STD-100G. Department of Defense Standard Practice for Engineering Drawings 1997-06-09.
Online at: elsmar.com/pdf_files/Military%20Standards/mil-std-100G.pdf
Since this document is in the public domain in the US by law, here's a local copy:
[click image to read]
Replaced on 1998-01-30 by ASME Y14.100, Engineering Drawing Practices .
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