Just to prove that the graphic presentation is new, take a look at this selection of images from  BibliOdyssesy, a blog devoted to “amazing archival images from the internet”.  (There’s a book too.)  The image above is titled, “A timetable indicating the differences in time between the principle cities of the world”, with their air line distances from Washington.  It was published in 1883, in Philadelphia by WM Bradley.

These images come from the David Rumsey map collection.  This is the life’s work of a map collector who has created a virtual museum.  (This must surely be the future of curation.  Tom Campbell, the new Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, plans to put the Met’s entire collection online.)

My first reaction looking at these is “where’s the interactivity, man?”  We’re so used to things popping away in flash, that these look rather flat.   But when you look at them closely, there’s an intensity to the way every calculation is made, then drawn, by a human.

What’s interesting about them is that they have the same mixture of amateurism and fascination with new technology (in this case, printing technology) that has energized today’s data visualization revolution.