With all that Playfair did to show the effectiveness of graphic chart methods from his first book, published in 1786 at the age of twenty-seven, till his death in 1823, why have not graphic charts become more thoroughly established as a universal language? Another interest was aroused as to the part which engineers have played in the development of the graphic language, since I noted in California that William Playfair was apprenticed in Scotland as a machinist and later became a draftsman for James Watt before writing on a wide variety of subjects. There are about 100 titles by Playfair on record. The story of William Playfair, still developing, may yet have large gaps. Location of those writings relating to graphic charts, however, appears to be fairly well completed.

This book is another contribution from the engineering profession, although written for general use rather than the technical field, on much the same general ideas as expressed in Graphic Methods in 1914. The 1914 book was written largely to disclose some of the fallacies that occur when graphic charts are used loosely without the basis of accuracy essentially associated with the work of people with an engineering background.

Until the last decade or so, the use of graphic charts seemed to be progressing sanely and fairly rapidly with no more guidance than resulted from the extremely brief preliminary report of the Joint Committee on Standards for Graphic Presentation, published in 1915. In recent years, some weeds seem to have sprung up to retard the growth of the more cultivated graphics which had been developing strongly with numerous offshoots since the World War stimulus. As in a garden where there is sometimes the policy of deciding in the early stages which are weeds and which are plants that will be productive, it has not been easy to find a method for defining good graphic charts as compared with poor or downright obnoxious charts.