Peter Jeffrey Booker


Peter Jeffrey Booker was a British engineer and technological drawing historian, known for his 1963 A history of engineering drawing, a seminal work on the history of technical drawing.

Life and work

Booker was born in Cambridge in August 1924. He received his secondary education at the Sandown Secondary School at the Isle of Wight, and sequentially attended the Royal Naval Artificers Training Establishment, Torpoint at Cornwall.
From 1940 to 1954 he served at the Royal Navy, where he worked in the Ordnance department. He started on gun mountings, and later worked in gunnery fire control equipment on ships, in workshops and in the drawing office. In 1954 he became Assistant Secretary at the Institution of Engineering Designers, and was representative of the Institute on the City St Guilds Advisory Committee on Mechanical Engineering Drawing. Brooker became editor of The Engineering Designer, and member of the Newcomen Society.
In the 1950s and 1960s Brooker published most of his work on engineering drawing and its history. He received several rewards for his work, among them the Founder Column awarded by the Institution of Engineering Designers. He continued to work at the Institution of Engineering Designers, and in the year 1992–93 was elected director of the Institute for one year.
Booked died in Woking, Surrey in April 2011 at the age of 86.

Work

''A history of engineering drawing,'' 1963

In a 1965 review of A history of engineering drawing Chilton summarised the intention of this work:
This work is regarded the standard history of engineering drawing. Its first chapters deal with:
Another 1978 review revealed more of the content:
The second 1979 edition of this work was enlarged and revised and contained 19 chapters.

Pioneers of engineering drawing

In A history of engineering drawing, Brooker goes more into details about the live, work and accomplishments of engineering designers. Brooker, for example, explained that:
The 1978 review of this work also stipulated, that:

Primary and secondary geometry

In his 1963 A history of engineering drawing Booker made the distinction between primary and secondary geometry. As Riley explained:
Inspired on this distinction John Willats in his 1997 Art and Representation. New Principles in the Analysis of Pictures defined projection systems in terms of primary and secondary geometry. Pascal lefèvre explained:

Selected publications

  • Booker, Peter Jeffrey. Principles and precedents in Engineering Design. Institute of Engineering Designers, 1962.
  • Booker, Peter Jeffrey. A history of engineering drawing. 1963, 1979.
  • Booker, P. J. Written Contribution for Engineering..
  • Booker, Peter Jeffrey, and W. E. Walters. Three dimensional projection drawing. Model & Allied Publications, 1968, 1985.
Articles, a selection:

Patents

  • 1979.