Visual.ly

We mentioned earlier when talking about infographics
that the history of data visualization dates back to the maps and graphs
of the 1600s, and that modern data visualization is credited to
William Playfair,
an early innovator in Statistical Graphics who created the pie chart in 1801.

One of the most important data visualizations in history and probably the best statistical graphic ever
drawn was Charles Minard’s 1861
map of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. This data visualization captures four different changing variables
in a single two-dimensional image. Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size
of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is
depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales.

The 1900s saw fewer developments in the field of data visualization; instead it was a time of
popularization. Data visualization began to be used in textbooks, and graphical methods were soon used
in science curriculums, particularly physics and biology. In 1962,
John Tukey wrote a manifesto calling for the recognition of data analysis as a separate
branch of statistics. And in 1967, Jacques
Bertin, a French cartographer, published the Semiologie Graphique, considered the theoretical
foundation of data visualization.

The most important development, of course, was computers. Not only could computers help with the
processing of huge amounts of data, but software was being developed that would allow people to
construct graphic forms as well as construct new ones. From Bell Laboratories to pen plotters, from the
mouse to tablets, technology made data visualization easier than ever.
And then, of course, came the Web, and with it, new visual ways to display data. Around 2002 or so, tag
clouds began to show up on blogs and websites. Also known as word clouds, these data visualizations
visually display the frequency of the most commonly used words or the most common web referrals.

And in 2004, Edward Tufte created
the sparkline: a small, word-sized graphic that can be embedded into sentences, tables, headlines,
spreadsheets or graphics. Sparklines present trends and variations associated with a measurement like
average temperature or stock market activity in a simple and condensed way. These data visualizations
are meant to be succinct, memorable and located right where they are discussed, rather than off in a chart
away from the flow of text.

There’s no way of knowing how the history of data visualization will change in the future, but an
important step is free web-based data visualization tools --
making it easier than ever to create data visualizations.