Alphonse Bertillon’s Synoptic Table of Physiognomic Traits (ca. 1909)
Cheat sheet to help police clerks put into practice Bertillon’s method for classifying and archiving the images of repeat offenders….more
19th Century
W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life (1900)
Visually dazzling set of hand-drawn charts created by Du Bois, condensing an enormous amount of data on African-American life into aesthetically daring and easily d…more
The Splash of a Drop (1895)
A delightfully focused study on the physics and aesthetics of a splashing drop, wit some wonderful diagrams….more
The Steps of Life
Selection of images illustrating on the idea that one’s life can be thought of as divisible into distinct stages….more
B. W. Betts’ Geometrical Psychology
Diagrams from Geometrical psychology, or, The science of representation: an abstract of the theories and diagrams of B. W. Betts (1887) by Louisa S. Cook, which det…more