On 3/27/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/27/07, Avi avi_wiki@yahoo.com wrote:
We are quoted in this month's issue of Focus, the Mathematical Association of America's newsletter, on page 5, for bringing a source for the term "spline".
PDF link here: http://www.maa.org/pubs/march07web.pdf
I fear we at wikipedia, and consequently that MAA article as well has it wrong. I rather suspect that splines were used already by folks copying illustrated manuscripts way back int the day, well before aeronautics had significantly progressed beyond flapping wing mechanisms.
I haven't got any evidence of that, and think it unlikely; the actual wood used for classical splines, even small thin pieces, doesn't bend nearly tightly enough to curve around in illustrated manuscript sized drawings. Modern hand illustrators do it largely freehand, and I have never seen one use a spline.
On the other hand, I have in my library some of the very early professional publications in Naval Architecture, and they all reference using splines when they talk about designing and lofting, back into the late 1700s at least.