A History of Curves and Surfaces in Computer Aided Geometric Design [pdf]
math.pku.edu.cnI'll take any opportunity to spread the word about Freya Holmér's incredible overview of splines, "The Continuity of Splines": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds
It's one of the single most informative and useful math videos I've ever seen, and taught me so much stuff I had no idea existed. I've been using beziers since I was a teen learning a pirated version of adobe illustrator 6 or 7 and I had simply assumed beziers were all you needed. NOPE!!!!
Not only that, it allowed me to realize what was wrong with a game prototype I was working on at the time, which had exactly to do with the continuity problems discussed in the video. Cannot recommend it enough.
Freya Holmér's "Why you can't multiply vectors?" was also a very nicely presented talk on a number of linear algebra topics.
This document strikes me as quite dated.
It opens with “This article provides a historical account of the major developments in the area of curves and surfaces as they entered the area of CAGD – Computer Aided Geometric Design – until the middle 1980s.” So your gut instinct appears to be correct.
Well, it says so in the abstract?