The compression theorem I.
A strictly short embedding is an embedding of a Riemannian manifold into an Euclidean space that strictly shortens distances. From such an embedding, the Nash-Kuiper process builds a sequence of maps converging toward an isometric embedding. In that paper, we describe this Nash-Kuiper process in the case of curves. We state an explicit formula for the limit normal map and perform its Fourier series expansion. We then adress the question of Holder regularity of the limit map.