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Re:Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination by leto_ii on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @11:00AM (#25917293)
I would like to add one of my finds (if it's already mentioned in the original post, sorry for the double) - the National Atlas of Japan (1977) [1].

Take a look at the railway traffic statistics [2]. The visualization there must have been painstaking to make.

[1] https://www.gsi.go.jp/atlas/atlas-e-etsuran.html

[2] https://www.gsi.go.jp/atlas/archive/j-atlas-d_e_49.pdf

edit:

The earthquake epicenter visualization is also worth mentioning:

[3] https://www.gsi.go.jp/atlas/archive/j-atlas-d_e_11.pdf

Re:Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination by paganel on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @01:03PM (#25919104)
On the subject of great-looking maps I highly recommend the second Austro-Hungarian Military Survey [1] from the 1860s-1870s, some of the details in those maps are truly exceptional (one of my personal projects consists in mapping the forested area of Romania's territory from nowadays using those maps).

A little less accurate but more beautiful is the first Hapsburg Military Survey, from the late 1700s [2], when and if I'll ever get a bigger house I'll definitely hang some prints of those maps on the walls.

[1] https://mapire.eu/en/map/europe-19century-secondsurvey/?laye...

[2] https://mapire.eu/en/map/europe-18century-firstsurvey/?layer...

Re:Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination by parsecs on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @12:07PM (#25918310)
Those are some beautiful visualizations. How did they do it in 1977, considering modern software like Tableau don't exist? The amount of expertise that goes into this must've been substantial.
Re:Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination by nl on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @07:22PM (#25922691)
In that timeframe, most visualisation was hand-drawn (especially on maps which were all hand drawn).