1500 – Plans-Reliefs

The first terrain/city models date back from the 16th century and were created for military purposes. Left image: a plan-relief of Bayonne, created by Sébastian Vauban (1633–1707), a famous fortification engineer of King Louis XIV. Right image: a plan-relief of Grenoble from 1848. These scale models were highly prized for the tactical advantage they brought, and they were also shown around for dissuasive purposes. “Il y a un relief de Namur dans les Tuileries, je vous demanderai d'avoir la […]

The first terrain/city models date back from the 16th century and were created for military purposes. Left image: a plan-relief of Bayonne, created by Sébastian Vauban (1633–1707), a famous fortification engineer of King Louis XIV. Right image: a plan-relief of Grenoble from 1848. These scale models were highly prized for the tactical advantage they brought, and they were also shown around for dissuasive purposes. “Il y a un relief de Namur dans les Tuileries, je vous demanderai d'avoir la complaisance d'y venir avec moi. Je vous ferai toucher au doigt et à l'œil tous les défauts de cette place, qui sont en bon nombre [...].” There is a relief of Namur in the Tuileries, I would ask you to kindly come with me. I will make you touch with your finger and your eye all the defects of this place, which are in good number. — Vauban's letter to Le Pelletier, president of the constituent assembly (1695). “Le Moniteur parle d'un plan de la Suisse, du feu général Pfiffer. Faites examiner ce plan, et, s'il est meilleur que celui que j'ai acheté dernièrement, faites-le acheter et transporter à Paris. Comme il est possible que nous ayons encore la guerre, il n'y a point de meilleure carte que ces plans en relief.” The Monitor speaks about a map of Switzerland, from the late general Pfiffer. Have this map examined, and if it is better than the one I bought recently, have it bought and transported to Paris. Since it is possible that we may still have war, there is no better map than these relief maps. — Napoléon's letter to Maréchal Berthier (1805). Sources: Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation, ETH Zurich (2006-2015) www.terrainmodels.com Yvonne Jansen (2014) Physical and Tangible Information Visualization. Robert-Max Antoni (1992-2000) Vocabulaire illustré de l'Art urbain - Relief Model. Napoléon I (1858) Correspondance de Napoléon 1er. Wikipedia Plan-relief de Grenoble. Left image from www.terrainmodels.com, right image from Jean-Pierre Dalbéra (Flickr). Related: Also see our entry on modern solid terrain modeling.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Physical model Tags: cartographic, plan relief, terrain model, walkable

1900 – Crum Brown's Mathematical Surface

Model by Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922) of a half-twist mathematical surface, featuring a non-Euclidean so-called Klein bottle, c. 1900. Sources: Photo from the Science Museum, London, textual description courtesy of Klaus Hentschel. For more, see Klaus Hentschel (2014): Visual Cultures in Science, Technology and Medicine, pp. 96ff. and pl. XIV.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Klaus Hentschel. Category: Physical model Tags: mathematics, science

1915 – Wire Models of Factory Worker Movements

3D wire models of hand motion paths (or chronocyclegraphs) created by Frank Gilbreth, a pioneer in the study of motion in the workplace. In his 1917 book, Gilbreth explains how he created these solid models from time-lapse photographs, and how useful they are to study and teach human motion. Left image: Wire model of foreman on drill press. This shows “positioning” in the midst of “transporting.” Right image: First photograph of wire models showing one man's progress of learning paths of least […]

3D wire models of hand motion paths (or chronocyclegraphs) created by Frank Gilbreth, a pioneer in the study of motion in the workplace. In his 1917 book, Gilbreth explains how he created these solid models from time-lapse photographs, and how useful they are to study and teach human motion. Left image: Wire model of foreman on drill press. This shows “positioning” in the midst of “transporting.” Right image: First photograph of wire models showing one man's progress of learning paths of least waste. These wires represent the paths of the left hand of a manager on a drill press, - a machine which he had not touched for twenty-five years. Sources: Régine Debatty (2012) The Chronocyclegraph. Everardo Reyes-Garcia (2014) Explorations in Media Visualization. Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1917) Applied motion study; a collection of papers on the efficient method to industrial preparedness. Left image from Régine Debatty, right image from archive.org.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: factory, hand movement, pragmatic, temporal data, wire

1934 – Hayward's Moon Model

Illustrator and model-maker Roger Hayward (1899-1979) working on a model of the lunar surface for the Griffith Planetarium, 1934. Sources: Kevin Kidney (2009) Mr. Hayward's Moon Model. Photo from Keven Kidney's blog, textual description courtesy of Klaus Hentschel. For more, see Klaus Hentschel (2014): Visual Cultures in Science, Technology and Medicine, pp. 217-226.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Klaus Hentschel. Category: Physical model Tags: cartographic, globe, moon

1949 – Mississippi River Basin Model

As a response to devastating floods of the Mississippi river in the early 1900s, the US Army Corps of Engineers built a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire river system. The model, 2.5 times the size of Disneyland, allowed them to design better flood control infrastructures and to eventually save millions of dollars. In 1973, the physical model ceased to be used and was replaced by computer models. Nevertheless, mathematical equations still cannot capture all the complexity of river […]

As a response to devastating floods of the Mississippi river in the early 1900s, the US Army Corps of Engineers built a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire river system. The model, 2.5 times the size of Disneyland, allowed them to design better flood control infrastructures and to eventually save millions of dollars. In 1973, the physical model ceased to be used and was replaced by computer models. Nevertheless, mathematical equations still cannot capture all the complexity of river dynamics, and physical models (albeit smaller) continue to be used by hydraulic engineers. Sources: 99 Percent Invisible Podcast (2016) America’s Last Top Model. Wikipedia (2016) Mississippi River Basin Model. Left image from 99 percent invisible, right image from Wikipedia.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Wesley Willett. Category: Physical model Tags: cartographic, hydraulic, physical computation, terrain model, walkable, water

1979 – Great Polish Map of Scotland

The "Great Polish Map of Scotland" is a 50 x 40 m concrete terrain model of Scotland. It was built by a Polish sergeant who stationed in Scotland during WWII and ended up living there. It is claimed to be the world's largest terrain model, although the Chinese built a 900 x 700 m model in 1999. Source: Atlas Obscura. Great Polish Map of Scotland.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Benjamin Bach. Category: Physical model Tags: cartographic, scotland, terrain model, walkable

2003 – Pattern Recognition in a Bucket

Chrisantha Fernando and Sampsa Sojakka from the University of Sussex published a paper where they demonstrate that a bucket of water can carry out complex, parallel computations, and can even do simple speech recognition. Their setup called "liquid brain" consists in a transparent water tank suspended over an overhead projector and four LEGO motors. Input values are sent to the motors which vibrate the water. A camera then reads the watter ripples and sends the data to a simple perceptron. The […]

Chrisantha Fernando and Sampsa Sojakka from the University of Sussex published a paper where they demonstrate that a bucket of water can carry out complex, parallel computations, and can even do simple speech recognition. Their setup called "liquid brain" consists in a transparent water tank suspended over an overhead projector and four LEGO motors. Input values are sent to the motors which vibrate the water. A camera then reads the watter ripples and sends the data to a simple perceptron. The paper shows that the system is able to distinguish between utterances of the words "zero" and "one" with much higher accuracy than a perceptron alone. Sources: Chrisantha Fernando and Sampsa Sojakka (2003) Pattern Recognition in a Bucket. Left image from Fernando and Sojakka's paper, right image from a slide deck by Ben Jones, Dov Stekal, Jon Rowe, and Chrisantha Fernando. Related: Also see our entry on Kohei Nakajima’s Computing Tentacle and our other entries on physical computation.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Uncertain Tags: analog computer, liquid state machine, physical computation, reservoir computing, water

2015 – Jller: A Robot Rearranges Pebbles by Geologic Age

Jller is a machine created by German artist Benjamin Maus and Czech artist Prokop Bartoníček that sorts pebbles from the German river Jller by their geologic age. To do this, Jller first analyzes an image of the stone it selects, extracting information like dominant color, color composition, lines, layers, patterns, grain, and surface texture. The machine then places the stones in alignment of age and type by sucking them into an industrial vacuum gripper and dropping them in the correct […]

Jller is a machine created by German artist Benjamin Maus and Czech artist Prokop Bartoníček that sorts pebbles from the German river Jller by their geologic age. To do this, Jller first analyzes an image of the stone it selects, extracting information like dominant color, color composition, lines, layers, patterns, grain, and surface texture. The machine then places the stones in alignment of age and type by sucking them into an industrial vacuum gripper and dropping them in the correct location within the grid. Source: Kate Sierzputowski (2016) A Kinetic Artwork that Sorts Thousands of Random River Stones by Age. Related: Also see our other entries on physical visualizations created by rearranging objects.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic, sent by: Alice Thudt. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: age, geology, pebbles, rearrangement, robot

2016 – Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

This data sculpture depicts a map of housing prices in San Francisco. It’s a map of the city, torn at the seams. The height of each area represents the average price per square foot for recent home sales. Where neighboring areas are close in value they are connected, but if neighboring areas are too far from each other I allow them to split, tearing the city along its most severe economic divides. Sources: Doug McCune (2016) Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart Abigail Cain […]

This data sculpture depicts a map of housing prices in San Francisco. It’s a map of the city, torn at the seams. The height of each area represents the average price per square foot for recent home sales. Where neighboring areas are close in value they are connected, but if neighboring areas are too far from each other I allow them to split, tearing the city along its most severe economic divides. Sources: Doug McCune (2016) Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart Abigail Cain (2016) This Sculpture Shows How the Tech Boom Has Upended San Francisco’s Neighborhoods Related: Also see our entry 2013 – Doug McCune’s Physical Maps.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: 3d printing, cartographic, data sculpture, housing prices, san francisco

2016 – Motus Forma: People's Motions in a Shared Space

Motus Forma is a data sculpture by Brian Allen and Stephanie Smith that aggregates 10 hours of people movements in the lobby space at Pier 9. The 1300+ motion paths are piled up according to time. Sources: Autodesk (2016) Motus Forma Instructables (2016) Motus Forma Photo by Pierre Dragicevic Related: Also see our other entries on temporal data.

Added by: Pierre Dragicevic. Category: Passive physical visualization Tags: 3d printing, data sculpture, temporal data