1896 – James Ive's Mechanical Teaching Map

The boundaries of the United States transformed during the 19th century, often through violent means. Mapmaker James Ives created this mechanical map to help people, especially students, visualize these changes. Sources: Leventhal Map Center (2019) Tweet. Boston Rare Maps (2016) Fantastic mechanical map of United States territorial expansion. Video by the Leventhal Map Center.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Jason Forrest. Category: Physical model Tags: cartographic, mechanical interaction

1920 – Yakama Time Ball

Women from the Yakama Native American tribe used strings of hemp as personal diaries. Each major event in their life was represented by a knot, a bead or a shell. This mnemonic device is called an Ititamat, or counting-the-days ball, or simply time ball. The first image shows an Ititamat created before 1920. On the second image, each string is a different Ititamat. The last image shows a 2003 replica. A young woman would use a time ball to record her courtship, marriage, and other experiences […]

Women from the Yakama Native American tribe used strings of hemp as personal diaries. Each major event in their life was represented by a knot, a bead or a shell. This mnemonic device is called an Ititamat, or counting-the-days ball, or simply time ball. The first image shows an Ititamat created before 1920. On the second image, each string is a different Ititamat. The last image shows a 2003 replica. A young woman would use a time ball to record her courtship, marriage, and other experiences using a system of knots and beads that only she could decipher. As she grew older, a woman might have several time balls with which to share her life story or keep those memories private. When she passed on, they were buried with her. The ball of twine grew in size as time passed and as events occurred. The women would sometimes divide the twine into 25-year lengths to make it more manageable. When the women were very old, they could use the knots and beads of their time balls to recall not only what happened in their lives but when the events occurred. They could easily recount when their children were born, when they moved away, and other major experiences. Sources: Helen H. Schuster (1990) The Yakima. pp. 33-35. Lone Grey Squirrel (2007) Time Ball. Marjanović D., Štorga M., Škec S., Bojčetić N., Pavković N. (2018) Data Objects: Design Principles for Data physicalization. First image from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Second image from Schuster's book (ibid). p. 35. Third image from ideiasdefora.com. Artefact exhibited in the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, Washington D. C. Related: Also see our entry on Torres Strait Islanders tallies and on the Polynesian Genealogical Instrument.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: anthropology, preliterate, self-logging, social use

1984 – Dewdney's Analog Gadgets

Alexander Dewdney is a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist who authored the recreational mathematics column in the Scientific American magazine from 1984 to 1991, after Martin Gardner and Douglas Hofstadter. In 1984, he describes a number of imaginary analog computers he calls "Analog Gadgets", which can in principle solve computing problems instantly. The first one, shown on the left image, uses spaghetti to sort numbers. The second one uses strings to find the shortest path in a […]

Alexander Dewdney is a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist who authored the recreational mathematics column in the Scientific American magazine from 1984 to 1991, after Martin Gardner and Douglas Hofstadter. In 1984, he describes a number of imaginary analog computers he calls "Analog Gadgets", which can in principle solve computing problems instantly. The first one, shown on the left image, uses spaghetti to sort numbers. The second one uses strings to find the shortest path in a graph. The third one uses nails and a rubber band to find the convex hull. The last one illustrated here uses soap bubbles to solve the Steiner tree problem. Dewdney admits that most of these ideas were not new and were "part of computer science folklore, passed around by word of mouth and rarely described in the literature". His Scientific American article and a book he later wrote in 1993 helped popularize the ideas. These analog gadgets were only thought experiments and were never meant to be put into actual use. Still, before digital computers took over, analog computers were used to solve real problems such as the control of battleship guns. Sources: A. K. Dewney (1984) Computer recreations - On the spaghetti computer and other analog gadgets for problem solving. Scientific American. June 1984, Volume 250, Issue 6. pp. 19--26. A. K. Dewdney (1993) Analog Computation - Spaghetti Computers, in The (New) Turing Omnibus–66 Excursions in Computer Science. pp. 223--229. First three images from the 1993 book, last image from the 1984 magazine article. Related: Also see our other entries on physical computation, including Christian Freksa's use of a 3D printer to solve the shortest path problem.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Michael McGuffin. Category: Physical model Tags: physical computation

2017 – Popsicles of Pollution

Students from New Taipei City collected samples from urban rivers, creeks and ports which they then froze in moulds and preserved in resin. ‘We hope when more people see this they can change their lifestyles,’ said one of the group. Source: Elle Hunt (2017) Popsicles of pollution: ice lollies highlight Taiwan's contaminated waterways.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Uncertain Tags: food, indexical, pollution, water

2018 – Anthropocene Footprints

Handmade physicalizations of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, by Mieka West and Sheelagh Carpendale. Each object represents data from a specific year (1990, 2010, and projections to 2030). Initially meant to be smog masks, the designs evolved into strange and beautiful objects evoking indigeneous artefacts such as Native American dreamcatchers, Inca quipus and Polynesian genealogical instruments, and whose visual and material complexity is reminiscent of Nathalie Miebach’s Woven Sculptures. […]

Handmade physicalizations of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, by Mieka West and Sheelagh Carpendale. Each object represents data from a specific year (1990, 2010, and projections to 2030). Initially meant to be smog masks, the designs evolved into strange and beautiful objects evoking indigeneous artefacts such as Native American dreamcatchers, Inca quipus and Polynesian genealogical instruments, and whose visual and material complexity is reminiscent of Nathalie Miebach’s Woven Sculptures. See their website for how to read the data. The objects were on display at the IEEE VIS 2018 Arts Program (VISAP’18) in Berlin. Sources: Mieka West and Sheelagh Carpendale (2018) Anthropocene Footprints. Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2018.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: textile, greenhouse gas, hand-made, pollution, quipu

2018 – Solving the Shortest Route Problem with a 3D Printer

Christian Freksa, a professor of Cognitive Systems at the Department of Informatics at the University of Bremen, shows how a shortest route can be computed by 3D-printing the route network using flexible material, and then pulling apart the start and end nodes. The tight portion of the network immediately gives the shortest route. The right image shows an earlier version using strings. This idea was first proposed by mathematician George Minty in 1957, in a short letter to the editor of the […]

Christian Freksa, a professor of Cognitive Systems at the Department of Informatics at the University of Bremen, shows how a shortest route can be computed by 3D-printing the route network using flexible material, and then pulling apart the start and end nodes. The tight portion of the network immediately gives the shortest route. The right image shows an earlier version using strings. This idea was first proposed by mathematician George Minty in 1957, in a short letter to the editor of the Operations Research journal. It was later popularized by Alexander Dewdney. Sources: Christian Freksa, Thomas Barkowsky, Zoe Falomir and Jasper van de Ven (2018) Geometric Problem Solving with Strings and Pins. To appear in Spatial Cognition and Computation. Christian Freksa (2015) Strong Spatial Cognition. George G. Minty (1957) A Comment on the Shortest-Route Problem. First and second image from the 2018 article, last image from the 2015 article.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Barbara Tversky. Category: Physical model Tags: 3d printing, network, physical computation, route

2018 – Phylogenetic Tree with Real Specimens

As part of a zoology class, evolutionary biologist Leo Smith created a phylogenetic tree of fishes where each leaf is an actual fish specimen. Source: Leo Smith's tweet (29 April 2018). Related: Also see our other entries on physical visualizations built by re-arranging physical items.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Mark Simpson. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: biology, rearrangement, tree

2019 – Sleep Blanket

A visualization of my son's sleep pattern from birth to his first birthday. Crochet border surrounding a double knit body. Each row represents a single day. Each stitch represents 6 minutes of time spent awake or asleep. Source: Seung Lee (2019) Twitter thread. Related: Also see our entry 2013 – Temperature Scarves and Afghans.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Steffen (@s1effen). Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: baby, data clothing, textile, self-logging, sleep

2019 – Hostile Terrain 94: Deaths at the US/Mexico Border

Prototype of a series of physical maps that will be exhibited across 94 cities worldwide in fall 2020. Each of the 3500 hand-written toe tags represents the recovered body of a migrant who died while crossing the US/Mexico border in the Sonoran Desert between 2000 and 2020. Coordinated by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). To learn more about UMP and the context of this map, listen to the Radiolab podcast series Border Trilogy. Sources: hostileterrain94.wordpress.com Left image from […]

Prototype of a series of physical maps that will be exhibited across 94 cities worldwide in fall 2020. Each of the 3500 hand-written toe tags represents the recovered body of a migrant who died while crossing the US/Mexico border in the Sonoran Desert between 2000 and 2020. Coordinated by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). To learn more about UMP and the context of this map, listen to the Radiolab podcast series Border Trilogy. Sources: hostileterrain94.wordpress.com Left image from Twitter user Jer Thorp Right image from hostileterrain94.wordpress.com

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Luiz Augusto de Macêdo Morais. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: cartographic, deaths, migration, toe tag

2019 – New Worry Beads: Deaths from Terrorism

Worry Beads, one for every year from 1945 (closest in the pic), are scaled at one cc per human life. The volume of each is set by the number of terrorist-caused deaths for that year globally. The whole thing is about 40' long, the largest bead (2014) is 19" dia. There’s other material which hopefully makes clear that the #1 American fear, terrorist attack, is ridiculous. There’s another string of beads, 50" long, which shows terrorist deaths in the US. You’re more likely to be […]

Worry Beads, one for every year from 1945 (closest in the pic), are scaled at one cc per human life. The volume of each is set by the number of terrorist-caused deaths for that year globally. The whole thing is about 40' long, the largest bead (2014) is 19" dia. There’s other material which hopefully makes clear that the #1 American fear, terrorist attack, is ridiculous. There’s another string of beads, 50" long, which shows terrorist deaths in the US. You’re more likely to be killed by a human toddler. The real horror: From 1945 thru 2017, globally, 413,000 people died via terrorism; in the same period in the US 992,000 people were murdered (and I’m missing data from 1946-1960) Source: Loren Madsen (2018) Facebook post and personal communication. Related: Also see our entry 2004 - Worry (Prayer) Beads for an earlier version by the same artist.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Loren Madsen. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: beads, deaths, terrorism