William PlayfairDied 11 Feb 1823 at age 63 (born 22 Sep 1759). Scottish engineer and economist who pioneered the graphical representation of statistics, creating the line graph, bar graph and pie chart, though his name is little known. His inventions and patents included metal-working machines, the mass-production of silver-plated spoons, improvements to agricultural implements, and modification of the bows to ships to imrove speed. He had gained experience as apprentice to Andrew Meikle (inventor of the threshing machine) and working with James Watt and Matthew Boulton (manufacturers of steam engines). Playfair’s book Commercial and Political Atlas (1786), which introduced his graphical display methods, was the first major work to use statistical graphs.« |
