History of Visual Representations as used in Science Largely following Robert Horn’s book Visual Languages Sheelagh Carpendale The Beginnings 30,000 years before written language Extensive lists and tables for keeping track of inventory and thought to be lunar calendar trade earliest data recording prior to pictographic writing Dordogne, France c. 38,000 BC Mesopotamia, c. 6,000 BC Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 1 The Beginnings Representational capabilities Lascaux, France, c.20,000 BC Sheelagh Carpendale The Beginnings First pictographic writing Early coordinate system Sumerians usedbd by surveyors to loca te ~2, 000 signs specific points in space contained phonograms and Egypt, c. 3200 BC determinative Mesopotamia c. 3200 BC Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 2 Ancient Egypt (c. 3000 BC) Hieroglyphs 5 major components; 3 communication functions explain pictures, identify people in pictures, record speeches pictographs little picture that means what it resembles ideograp hs action represented by some characteristic element Sheelagh Carpendale Ancient Egypt (c. 3000 BC) phonograms graphic symbols, some iconic, that stand for sounds Young & Champollion 1819, discovered that this spelt Ptolemy the writing of a sound by a picture of something that contains that sound is called a rebus 80 signs that indicate double sounds the 24 single consonant signs Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 3 Egyptian Numerals Sheelagh Carpendale Ancient Egypt (c. 3000 BC) Determinatives handle homonyms and ambiguities examples this sign would be added to indicate the domain of books this ‘cartouche’ surrounds all royal names seated man or woman indicate male or female domains the inclusion of a single stroke indicated that a sign was an icon, standing for what it represented, without the stroke was a phonogram, standing for a sound. cobra sound ‘d’ Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 4 Ancient Egypt (c. 3000 BC) Information mural Sheelagh Carpendale Oldest known map Shows spatial relationships one-to-one correspondence between symbols and features shows all of northern Mesopotamia Nuzi, c. 2300 BC Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 5 From pictograms to symbolic forms This image shows the transformation from pictograms to symbolic forms Mesopotamia Sheelagh Carpendale Earliest phonetic alphabet Earliest completely phonetic alphabet north Semitic, 22 letters, basis for Greek and subsequent phonetic alphabets Palestine and Syria, c 1700 BC earliest Chinese script integrated pictograms & phonograms China, c. 1500 BC first geometry manual practical manual, rectangles, trapezoids, triangles, circles Egypt, c. 1500 BC First written record of music Mesopotamia, c. 750 BC Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 6 Oldest city plan archaeologists claim it is to scale features labeled with words (Mesopotamia, c. 1300 BC) Sheelagh Carpendale 300 BC to 800 AD Euclid’s formal statements about geometric axioms and reasoning Greece, c 300 BC invention of paper Ts’ai Lun, China, c. 105 earliest codex (precursor of the book) c. 100-300 leaving spaces between words Charlemagne’ s reform of writing said to have enabled silent reading France, c. 800 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 7 Mayan Numerals one to nineteen Sheelagh Carpendale Early use of Tables Tabulating astronomical information to aid navigation Ptolmey, Egypt, c. 200 BC Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 8 Time grid First curves plotted on a time grid chart shows planetary orbits, plots motion through time in Somnium Scipionis, c. 1000-1100 Sheelagh Carpendale Grid Map Carved in stone in China 1137 – probably created 1100 Precision of coast and rivers remarkable About 3 feet square Nothing like it in Europe until the 1500s E. Chavannes, “Les Deux Plus Anciens Specimens de la Cartographic Chinoise,” Bulletin de l’Ecole Française se l’Extreme Orient, 3 (1903), 1-13, Carte B. Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 9 Extensive Tabular Information Widely used in Medieval period in Henry II’s gospels, c. 1020 Sheelagh Carpendale First Graphic to use Branching Genealogical tree led to large class of diagrams initial form was the ‘cranes foot’ as seen in this example genealogy of Edward I, c. 1296 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 10 Branching Structures Use became common representing lists of virtues and vices, and structure of knowledge as well as genealogy throughout Middle Ages Sheelagh Carpendale Schematic Diagrams In medieval manuscripts various diagrams and labeled illustrations throughout Middle Ages Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 11 First known bar graph Proto-bar graph no quantities present illustrates theoretical function shows that spatial analogs of quantities had begun to to conceptualized Nicole Oreseme, French mathematician, c.1350 Sheelagh Carpendale Perspective Drawings Creation of ‘space’ or the third dimension on a two- dimensional surface Leon Battista Alberti and Filippo Brunelleschi, Italian architects, 1435 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 12 Books in print Gutenburg Bible regarded as a turning point in western culture began widespread changes in the dissemination of knowledge Johannes Gutenburg, German printer, c. 1455 Sheelagh Carpendale Technical Illustrations First technical book with illustrations woodcuts of engines of war In De re militari, Roberto Vaturio, author, Joannes Nicodai de Verona, printer, Italy, 1472 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 13 Visualization in Science Extensive use if visualization in science and engineering plans for fortification, bridges, vehicles elaborations of theories idea of sketch became hallmark for creative thinking Leonardo da Vinci, Florence, c. 1500 Sheelagh Carpendale C 1500 Routine use of page numbers Manutius, Venice, 1499 Extensive use of wood block illustrations 16th century Tables of empirical data led to tabular display of numbers Germany, early 17th century First Bivariate Scatterplot, 1546 edition of Cosmographia, Petrus Apianus Coordinate system relates graphed line and equation Rene Descartes, French mathematician, La Geometrie, 1637 . Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 14 Rectilinear Tree Structure First introduced c. 1500 The structure of the now so common modern organization chart Sheelagh Carpendale Automatic Recording Devices Automatic collection of data Weather clock used a recording needle on a moving drum to graph changes in temperature. Chr is top her Wren, Eng lis h arc hitec t 1664 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 15 Data Maps 1st data maps Edmond Halleyyp’s 1686 map shows trade winds and monsoons Norman J. W. Thrower, “Edmond Halley as a thematic Geo- Cartographer,” Annals of the association of American Geographers, 59 (Dec. 1969), p 652-676 (Tufte, 1883, p.23) Sheelagh Carpendale Data Maps 1686 Detail of trade winds map shows encoding – “the sharp end of each little stroke pointing out … from whence the wind continually comes Edmond Halley, “An Historical Account of the Trade Winds, and Monsoons, Observable in the Seas Between and Near the Tropicks; With an Attempt to Assign the Phisical Cause of Said Winds,” Philosophical Transactions, 183 (1686), p. 153-168 (Tufte, 1883, p.23) Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 16 Data Maps Shows lines of magnetic declination started field of thematic maps Edmond Halley, English scientist,1656-1742 Sheelagh Carpendale Biographical Timeline Started now widely used technique of plotting data on timelines Joseph Priestly, English chemist, 1765 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 17 Time Series Chart of National Debt of England in Commercial and Political Atlas, William Playfair, British scientist, 1786 Johann Lambert 1779 Shows periodic variation in soil temperature in relation to the depth under the surface Sheelagh Carpendale First modern bar chart Some earlier examples exist in second edition Commercial and Political Atlas, William Playfair, British scientist, 1787 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 18 First Circle Graph Circles represent area of country, line on left population in millions, line on the right taxes in millions (both measured on vertical scale). Slope direction positive or negative is significant but not slope magnitude due to the size of country affecting it. in Commercial and Political Atlas, William Playfair, British scientist, 1786 Sheelagh Carpendale First Pie Chart Show relative sizes of the different states and territories after the United States purchased Louisiana William Playfair, British scientist, 1786 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 19 Descriptive Geometry Foundation for the development of engineering drawing Gaspard Monge, French mathematician, 1795 printed coordinate paper not until, England, 1794 Sheelagh Carpendale Statistical Graphics – early 1800s 1812 - Sub-divided bar graph – ldtdtildled to detailed comparative analysis of data Alexander von Humbolt, German Scientist, 1812 1833 – Cumulative frequency graph –compare rate of growth of a variable J. B. J. Fourier, French mathematician, 1821 Sheelagh Carpendale Beyond Simple Screen Design 20 Statistical Graphics – early 1800s 1832 – curve fitting to a scatterplot – this started a whole new branch of statistics – difficult to do without visualization J. F. W. Herschel, English mathematician, 1832 1833 - Histogram – extends ability to compare data. This one compare number of suicides of French men by different methods A. M. Guerry, French Statistician ,