Michael Friendly, known for piecing together the history of visualization, chatted with Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities. I liked this tidbit on Charles-Joseph Minard:
Minard would likely be unknown today, if Marey had not so aptly said his flow map of Napoleon’s March on Moscow “defied the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence.” Funkhouser picked this up, and then Tufte anointed it as “the greatest graphic ever drawn”. But in his time, Minard was just an engineer working for the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees (School of Bridges and Roads) in Paris. The corpus of his work lay buried in the archives of the ENPC. Today, Paris celebrates its intellectual and artistic heroes with place names, like Rue Descartes, Place Monge, …but there is nothing named for Minard. Not even his burial place was known until Antoine discovered this in Montparnasse Cemetery, and Les Chevaliers met for lunch and a celebration at his grave, where a small plaque was installed.
