Warning: Graphic Content

[art...@yahoo.com]

Yesterday, I was curious about the history of graphs and found that William Playfair was the first to use graphs to plot data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Playfair
He is credited in inventing bar graphs among other types.
I suspect that Rene Descarte used graphs to draw mathematical functions, but I don't know if he was the first (Anybody know?). Euler is the father of graphical theory.
In my searches I found the question What is the origin of the graph? The answer is X=0, Y=0. Not exactly what I was looking for.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

I hope you get better soon, I heard you were asymptomatic.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[Les Albert]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 07:10:18 -0800 (PST), "art...@yahoo.com"
<art...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Yesterday, I was curious about the history of graphs and found that William Playfair was the first to use graphs to plot data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Playfair
>He is credited in inventing bar graphs among other types.
>I suspect that Rene Descarte used graphs to draw mathematical functions, but I don't know if he was the first (Anybody know?).

I found the following:
"A 1644 diagram by Michael Florent van Langren, showing estimates of
the difference in longitude between Toledo and Rome, is sometimes
considered to be the first known instance of a graph of statistical
data." - https://www.datavis.ca/papers/langren-TAS09154.pdf

Les