To create technical drawings such as those presented by the traveling exhibition, Doodles, Drafts, and Designs, draftsmen needed drawing instruments with specialized scales. Most often, their goal was to represent a real-life place or object at a reduced proportion. Thus, drafting rules like those shown on this page were typically marked for making drawings at scales such as 1/8-inch to 1 foot. Sometimes, instead of marking the increments throughout a scale, only the first and last segments of a scale were subdivided to the desired proportion. These were called open divided or architect's scales.
Rules for drafting sometimes had plotting scales. These were divided into equal increments of a useful length, such as 1/2-inch, that could be directly transferred to a drawing such as a surveying map. At both ends, plotting scales typically had diagonal scales. These allowed users to reasonably accurately estimate the decimal division between two markings on a scale. Instruments in this category also may have a line of chords. This projected the distance between the end of a quarter-circle arc and each of the degrees along the arc onto a straight line. Finally, the scales for measuring lengths on rules for drafting were often divided into multiples of 1/10-inch, called chain scales, which were advantageous for activities such as construction or machine work.
