a brief history of information graphics/infographics

A Brief History of Infographics

Babylonian

Clay Tablet

500 BC

1st Printed: Edmond Halley’s Map Showing Prevailing Winds

1686

1875 First Daily Weather Map by Frances Galton

EarlyWeather Maps

William Playfair 1786Founder of Graphical Statistics

Invented

• Line graph• Bar Chart• Pie Chart• Circle graph

Dr. John Snow: London Cholera Epidemic 1854Snow combined map with data to plot cholera deaths to find source

Table of Universal History, Paris 1858.

Visual of the complete history of humankind, from Adam and Eve to1858. Individual cultures are depicted as rivers. Credit: Eug. Pick, 1858 Paris

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/16/infographics-data-visualisation-history

What’s Napoleon Got to Do With It?What’s Napoleon Got to Do With It?

Charles Minard, 1869

Charted the Complex Story of Napoleon’s Disaster

Otto Neurath 1925Forefather of the pictograms we see today

Fritz Khan 1926Visualizes human metabolism as a process of industrial production

Credit: Fritz Kahn. Stuttgart 1926 © von Debschitz

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/16/infographics-data-visualisation-history

Chart of Electromagnetic Radiations 1944The Lawrence Livermoore National Lab

Ridiculed as journalistic fast food

But most newspapers adoped the full-color, graphic-intensive look

Most imitated the Weather Map

1982 USA Today

Explaining War: World War I

Explaining War:

World War II

Still Explaining War:Costs of War

Still Explaining War:

Collateral Casualties2014

http://popchartlab.com/products/the-very-many-varieties-of-beer

Infographic Humour

Infographic Overload