A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication

ISBN 978-5-93255-729-7

Infographics have long since moved beyond the confines of scientific laboratories: navigation apps, stock market charts, epidemic maps – data visualization has become the language through which the modern world explains itself. But this language has a history, and it is far richer than is commonly thought.

Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer take us back to the origins of visual communication in the mid-17th century, when the Dutch cartographer Michaël Florent van Langren created the first statistical graph – an estimate of the distance from Rome to Toledo. By 1786, William Pleifer had invented the line graph and the bar chart to illustrate the balance of trade. In the 19th century – the golden age of data visualization – infographics helped track epidemics and make sense of pressing social issues – and it was then that they began to truly transform the way humans think.

Drawing on a wealth of illustrative material, the authors trace the 400-year evolution of an idea that has become one of the primary tools of knowledge – both in science and in the public sphere.