Mapping data visualisation’s meteoric rise from Victorian London to today
Today, data visualisation is ubiquitous, created and used by experts and laypeople alike to make sense of an increasingly intricate – and intricately measured – world. However, some 200 years ago, the notion that fanciful images could accurately represent hard data wasn’t taken seriously among scientists. This stylish animation walks viewers through two centuries of data visualisation. Moving from the physician John Snow’s cholera ‘dot map’ of London from 1854, to a disturbing instance of eugenic misinformation, to the ‘warming stripes’ charting today’s climate crisis, the video highlights five data visualisations that gave rise to the form, and changed the world.
Video by The Royal Society, BBC Ideas
videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes
videoMedicine
Drinking wine from toxic cups was the 17th century’s own dubious ‘detox’ treatment
11 minutes
videoEngineering
How water-based clocks revolutionised the way we measure time
10 minutes
videoHistory of science
How we came to know the size of the Universe – and what mysteries remain
26 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
videoArt
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes
videoEnvironmental history
In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests
13 minutes
videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes
videoArchitecture
A 3D rendering of the Colosseum captures its architectural genius and symbolic power
17 minutes