Early Examples of Data Visualization

Data Visualization has come a long way since we started using images to represent data. Seeing some of the early adaptations of data really shows how far we have come through technological advantages, yet also shows the desire for us to visualize our numbers. Here are some early examples of data visualizations that have paved the path for how we report data today. 

Abraham Lincoln 

During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln had a map of the Southern United States with gradients over the map representing counties and areas based on the number of slaves they had.

Charles Minard

Charles Minard is famous for creating an infographic of Napoleon’s army going to and from Russia. What is unique about his infographic is that it not only represents the size of the army, but also the direction it moved in.

W.E.B. Du Bois 

W.E.B. Du Bois paved the way for the modern infographic in the early 1900’s. He created 60 infographics along with his students for the 1900 World Fair describing lives of black people in the South thirty years after the Civil War. According to Shawn Michelle Smith, a visual studies professor, “[Du Bois] believed that a clear revelation of the facts of African American life and culture would challenge the claims of biological race scientists influential at the time, which proposed that African Americans were inherently inferior to Anglo-Americans.”