Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
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
video
Engineering
How water-based clocks revolutionised the way we measure time
10 minutes
video
History of science
How we came to know the size of the Universe – and what mysteries remain
26 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
video
Art
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes
video
Environmental history
In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests
13 minutes
video
History of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes
video
Architecture
A 3D rendering of the Colosseum captures its architectural genius and symbolic power
17 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
video
History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes