PLAYFAIR, William.

£6,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Tableaux d'arithmétique linéaire, First edition in French, combining Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas (1786) with his Essay on the National Debt (1787), both pioneering works in data visualisation and graphic display.William Playfair (1759-1823) invented the series line graph, the bar chart, and the pie chart "without significant precursors" (ODNB). He published many books and pamphlets incorporating such charts and graphs, holding that they were the best means of displaying empirical data, yet met with indifference in his native England. His work was better received in France, where he lived from 1787, and he contributes a new introduction to this translation. The translator Henry Jansen (1741-1812) was for a time librarian to Talleyrand, and later became the imperial censor.

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