|  AUG 1990

Bezier Curves: No Tool For Trading by Donald R. Lambert

Bezier Curves: No Tool For Trading by Donald R. Lambert Once upon a time, long, long ago, when the dates all ended in ""B.C."" (which, as we all know, stands for ""before computers""), draftsmen were often faced with a problem. The head draftsman would tell his assistant to draw a smooth curve that passed through a series of given points. The assistant would get out a long thin sheet of metal called a ""spline,"" fasten it to his drafting board so that it passed through the desired points and draw the required line. This method was grand for producing plans, but when it came time to convert the blueprint into a physical object, the guy with the hammer and saw asked hard questions such as, ""How high is this arch on page two compared to the one on page seven?"" Someone had to come up with a way to give precise answers. That someone was P.E. Bezier, a French engineer who wrote Numerical Control: Mathematics and Applications, which appeared as part of the 1974 edition of the John Wiley series in computing. Once the basic theory is mastered, the process is not hard to apply, just incredibly time consuming and exacting. However, the result isn't useful for trading!

by Donald R. Lambert