A comprehensive history of data visualization—its origins, rise, and effects on the ways we think about and solve problems.

With complex information everywhere, graphics have become indispensable to our daily lives. Navigation apps show real-time, interactive traffic data. A color-coded map of exit polls details election balloting down to the county level. Charts communicate stock market trends, government spending, and the dangers of epidemics. A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication tells the story of how graphics left the exclusive confines of scientific research and became ubiquitous. As data visualization spread, it changed the way we think.

Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer take us back to the beginnings of graphic communication in the mid-seventeenth century, when the Dutch cartographer Michael Florent van Langren created the first chart of statistical data, which showed estimates of the distance from Rome to Toledo. By 1786 William Playfair had invented the line graph and bar chart to explain trade imports and exports. In the nineteenth century, the “golden age” of data display, graphics found new uses in tracking disease outbreaks and understanding social issues. Friendly and Wainer make the case that the explosion in graphical communication both reinforced and was advanced by a cognitive revolution: visual thinking. Across disciplines, people realized that information could be conveyed more effectively by visual displays than by words or tables of numbers.

Through stories and illustrations, A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication details the 400-year evolution of an intellectual framework that has become essential to both science and society at large.

"The invention of graphs and charts was a much quieter affair than that of the telescope, but these tools have done just as much to change how and what we see." - New Yorker

"An indispensable account of how important practitioners of data visualizations write the history of their field." - Information & Culture

"We live in an era of data dependence—never before have graphic representations of data been as essential and sought after as at this moment…There has not been a publication of this scope on the evolution of graphic representation of qualitative and quantitative data since Funkhouser’s work…Scholars, practitioners, lovers of statistics and data visualization, and anyone interested in understanding the methods and techniques of today will benefit from understanding the innovations that brought us to where we are." - Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation

"A thoughtful and well-written introduction to the world of data visualization and its history." - MAA Reviews

"An intellectually fascinating book…The audience for this book is wide. It would be useful to professionals and to professors in many departments such as psychology, sociology, economics, biology, physics, and any department that uses graphs to display quantitative information. It is a book to broaden your knowledge and offer interesting asides for lectures and meetings…Consult it frequently to learn of the stories of the developers of the many graphic methods we use today." - Personnel Psychology

"A marvel of research scholarship…This is the sort of book that one can browse and sample in bite-size chunks as the mood seizes, encountering curious delights while doing so." - Significance