Life before the invention of AutoCAD, 1950-1980

The 1980 in the title is IMHO way off, as the article itself states:

>Despite the massive effort by the technical field in the early 1980s, it wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that CAD software became capable enough to be practical in engineering design.

I would put around the late '90's or early 2000's the time where drawing tables actually disappeared and were then fully replaced by CAD and plotters, for a few years in the '90's there were both in use, depending on industry/size of firm, etc., early CAD (and OS running them, and hardware on which they were running) even if functioning, were primitive and slow, and the available "output" devices (pen plotters) were very, very slow.

Yet somehow all those drafting tables gave us everything from bridges and skyscrapers to century-series fighter planes and all the equipment it took to get us to the moon in what appears to be 10% of the time it takes a company today to design a table lamp.