Engineering drawings are major way to convey practical information such as planning, designing, construction and maintenance for specific structures. However the drawings prepared for specific structures also contain information to study contemporary engineering tendency in general, which means that engineering drawings have value for historical references as well. In this paper steel bridge superstructures at the beginning of 20th century are focused and their engineering drawings are researched to clarify the value for references for the study on civil engineering history.
Engineering drawings by the design office of Jiun Masuda (1883-1947) are mainly studied for Japanese case and engineering drawings for the same period in UK, Germany and USA are also studied for the comparison of each cases. Based on these studies, western influences and features of Japanese bridge engineering at the beginning of 20th century are examined to clarify the value of engineering drawings for historical study on civil engineering.
