I started quilting in the late 1970s which was before rotary rulers and cutters. The use of rulers and strip cutting/piecing techniques really took off in the 1980s and became "the" way to do things in the 1990s.
Before that we mostly just had block diagrams and you would figure them out on graph paper for the size you wanted. In general there were no layout directions, yardage required, or how to piece the blocks.
BTW, I was a "child born to American parents abroad", born in Regensburg. Don't remember a bit of it, moved back stateside by the time I was 2.