Do you have any job skills that are now obsolete?

[PJMcK]

32. Music calligraphy

Until the 1990s, most music was copied by hand onto special music paper that was used in a printing process known as “diazo,” kind of like blueprinting. Copyists were trained to use special pens and inks on those papers. The style and quality of the handwriting was commensurate with the level of pay charged per page.

In college, I had to take a class in calligraphy to learn all the rules of music notation. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of pens, nibs, guards, French curves, an electric eraser (looked like a scary vibrator!), drafting table and more. Copy work helped pay for college and afterwards.

It all ended in the ‘90s when notation software was introduced. By the early 2000s, nobody copied music by hand. All that gear I had was worthless! However, working on a computer is far more efficient and the output is superior.