How were the circles drawn?

[ReneZ]

Just as a remark: 'compass' for the drawing tool is somewhat irritating to German speakers because 'Kompass' is only used for the navigational instrument - the tool is a 'Zirkel'. I just realized that apparently most romance languages have the same double meaning for the word as English, so there is nothing lost in translation in that case I guess.

Not Italian, which confusingly has it the other way around... Kompass = bussola, Zirkel = compasso 

And just if anyone would think that Dutch and German are likely to be similar or even the same, the navigational compass is (indeed) 'kompas' in Dutch, while the circle drawing instrument is a 'passer'. The word similar to German 'Zirkel', Dutch: cirkel, means circle, which is 'Kreis' in German.

Even google translate gets confused here (depending on the direction of translation).
German 'Zirkel' becomes English 'circle', and Dutch 'kompas' (both wrong, or at least not the primary meaning).