Since the close of the World War, other activities have crowded into the background my interest in graphic charts and human reactions to them. It was impossible, however, to resist tearing from magazines and newspapers thousands of examples of particularly interesting or especially erratic graphic charts. These were added to examples which had come, in what Hollywood would call "fan mail," from readers of Graphic Methods. As recently as twenty months ago there was still no expectation of my ever writing another book on the subject.

Although I had been in Los Angeles many times and had passed the Huntington Library on John Playfair, the Brother of William Playfair

numerous occasions, I in his Inquiry, 1805, William Playfair stated that his

had never found time to brother taught him "that whatever can be exvisit it Then after pressed in numbers, may be expressed by lines."

,, / . . , J To the "best and most affectionate of brothers,"

months of mtensive study ,,,.„. ™ , .

William Playfair owed "the invention of these

Charts."

ill

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PREFACE

of some problems in Los Angeles in which graphic presentation had proved particularly effective in crystallizing opinion on a complex situation. I visited the Huntington Library on the last day before starting North and East. While observing some unusually fine types of early bookbinding and the repairs made to the bindings on some of the Library's most precious volumes, it occurred to me to ask the Librarian, Dr. Leslie Bliss, what books the library had by William Playfair, to whom this book is dedicated. In a few minutes there was brought to us the only one they had listed under William Playfair: