Technical manuals are nothing new, but the tools have come a long way from the illustrations created for Project Gemini, the B-17 Flying Fortress or the the SR-71 Blackbird. The October 2008 issue of Wired magazine has a great gallery of historical technical manuals titled "A Photo Essay of Classic Instruction Manuals", and Wired.com adds two more galleries: "Classic Flight Manuals: B-58A, F-14A, Apollo and Gemini" and "Classic Computer Manuals and Plans from Apple and IBM".

Considering that these had to be done by hand as Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite X4 wasn't available back then, I can only say that these are really impressive... here are some of the images:

1966 NASA PROJECT GEMINI FAMILIARIZATION MANUAL

CA. 1942 B-17F FLYING FORTRESS PILOT FAMILIARIZATION MANUAL

1988 SR-71 BLACKBIRD ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL SYSTEMS