“Part Tooling Sheet” (B. No. 103) forms repurposed as sketch pads

In this document

These two pages are printed forms from the Société Anonyme André Citroën, titled “Fiche d'outillage de la pièce N°” (referenced “B. No. 103”). Their intended use is administrative: to track the tooling required for the manufacture of a part, with fields for “Organe” (Component), “Type”, “Désignation” (Description), and a large table intended to record folio numbers, issue dates, quantities, operation numbers, receipt dates at the tooling department, workshop symbols, scheduled/actual delivery dates, and labour cost prices p. 2-3.

On both copies, these printed tables have not been filled out according to their original function: no administrative data is entered in the boxes p. 2. Instead, they served as a blank medium for technical sketches drawn in pencil over the print.

Page 2

A schematic sketch, without captions, occupies the central-left part of the page, representing a mechanism with curved shapes associated with a rectangular element. Some handwritten marks in red/brown pencil appear at the bottom right, in the “Actual” and “Cost Price” column area, without any legible content being extractable p. 2.

Page 3

The form is reproduced upside down (rotated 180°). A more developed handwritten sketch is superimposed on the bottom of the table: it depicts an articulated mechanism, with two bent arms or levers connected by oblique rods like connecting links, several circular pivot axes, and on the right a rectangular block bearing the numbers “6” and “5”. Dotted lines suggest trajectories or hidden parts, and a small cross mark appears to the left of the sketch p. 3.

No caption, part number, or usable handwritten date accompanies these drawings.

Context

“B. No. 103” type tooling sheets fall under classic industrial management at Citroën during the interwar period and beyond: they were used to plan the manufacture of specific tooling for each part, from the design office to delivery to the workshop. This type of printed matter, undated by nature, could have circulated for several decades in technical departments.

The reuse of blank administrative forms as sketch drafts was a common practice among engineers of the time, who used the paper available at their workstation rather than dedicated sheets.

Archivist's perspective

These two forms illustrate, by omission, a working method rather than an identified project: Paul Magès seems to have seized available administrative paper to quickly sketch mechanical ideas, without concern for the initial function of the medium p. 2-3.

The articulated mechanism on page 3, with its connecting links and pivot axes, evokes by its shape other sketches of mechanical systems kept in the same collection, but nothing in the document allows it to be identified precisely or linked with certainty to a named part. This practice of reusing forms can be compared to that observed on the Workshop form “Standard Components Retouched during Assembly” (K 39-31), also repurposed as a sketch pad.

For lack of a caption, part number, or date, these sheets remain difficult to place precisely in the chronology of Magès's work; they testify above all to the informal and opportunistic nature of his initial graphic drafts.