Desmond Paul Henry (British, 1921–2004) 1963 Drawing, 1963
Pen and ink, created by an electro-mechanical drawing machine, on paper
27.9 × 35.6 cm
Collection of Bre Pettis
PION.2026.089
Description
A 1963 machine drawing — the year Henry built Drawing Machine 2 from bombsight-computer parts — its looping, interfering line-fields the signature of a device that drew by mechanics rather than program, unrepeatable by design. The V&A's comparable sheets from 1961–64 use the same pen-and-ink-by-machine medium at similar scale. This is the earliest machine-made drawing in the collection: analogue computation putting ink on paper five years before Cybernetic Serendipity gave the genre its name.