[R] French Curve

[Liaw, Andy]

> From: Ken Knoblauch
> 
> 
> >I remember that my father had a French curve: it was a 
> plastic template
> >used for drawing which had several smooth edges of varying curvature.
> >You could use it to draw a wide variety of curved shapes.  
> No doubt the
> >French called it something else.
> 
> Nobody, up and down the corridor here, of age to have used one, could
> think of a name, but we looked it up in a universal French dictionary
> on the web, and it came up with ``un pistolet''.  

I recall reading:

E.J. Wegman and I.W. Wright. Splines in Statistics.
Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol 78,
N382, 1983.

which mentioned `spline' as a tool that draftsmen used to draw curves, but
the description does not match the french curve I know, which _is_ a
template-like piece of various curvature.  (I used one of these in the year
I spent in Architechture school right after high school.  No, I not _that_
old...  I believe they are still in common used today.)  

Andy
 
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