FRENCH CURVE - SMALL

This drawing tool was used by Jurgen Gossman in the 1980s and 1990s when he was a town planner and later a member of the planning department in the City of Armadale. These tools were used to create hand drawn technical plans for subdivisions, drainage systems, roads and other engineering tasks. In the mid to late 1990s the need to use these tools was slowly replaced by computer programs. Staff would have been trained in how to use these tools as they were gaining their engineering degrees.
The French Curve is a manual drawing implement used for drawing curves that cannot be drawn with compasses. It is an invention dating back to 1880s with a wide variety of application in drafting, maths, engineering, and fashion. The design outline inside the French curve is called the Euler spiral, where the curves change linearly with the curves length. As computer aided drafting programmes grew in popularity, most notably with the rise of CAD, manual drawing implements such as the French curve gradually fell out of popularity. Rotring (stylized: rOtring) was a German manufacturing company that was established in 1928. They initially specialised in writing implements and expanded into technical drawing tools circa 1967. The company was famous for their numerous pen technologies, including the multipen (multi-coloured mechanical pencil). The brand is currently owned by Newell Brands after its acquisition in 1998. Their vintage products are still highly sought after.
Since the establishment of local governments across Western Australian in 1871, they have been responsible for the designing and construction of local roads and drains. They also quickly became responsible for town planning, meaning staff with the skills to create accurate drawings have always been needed. The tool represents a manual skill that was essential for council staff who worked in the planning department that has now been replaced by computer programs