The Golden Age of Information Graphics

Infographics today are mostly pointless decorations around a few simple facts that add nothing meaningful. But information graphics once deserved their name with dense, meticulously-drawn, well-researched information. Here is an example from 1944.

The Lawrence Livermoore National Lab recently posted this Chart of Electromagnetic Radiations, which was originally published in 1944, on their flickr stream. It’s a beautiful example of the kind of poster or magazine fold-out that was fairly common during the golden age of information graphics, from the 1940s (if not earlier) to the early 1990s. As a kid, I’d spend hours poring over books and magazines with detailed illustrations and explanations of all sorts of technology, from power plants to the Space Shuttle.

The poster compiles a huge range of different information about electromagnetic waves, from their origin to their different uses, from radio and (then-new) television to photography. This is not just an information graphic in the true sense, but, to use Nigel Holmes‘ term, an explanation graphic.

The poster is not only still highly informative, it also gives a wonderful glimpse into the time it was made. Just look at the illustrations for the different parts of the spectrum that were allocated for specific uses (note ‘mobile’ in particular).

Instead of dumbing the topic down, there is a lot of in-depth information here. There is a seamless and seemingly effortless transition from everyday uses to very specific physical effects like the reflection of x-rays [...]