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''. ____________________ Ken Knoblauch Inserm U371, Cerveau et Vision Department of Cognitive Neurosciences 18 avenue du Doyen Lepine 69675 Bron cedex France tel: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 77 fax: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 61 portable: 06 84 10 64 10 http://www.lyon.inserm.fr/371/