Friday Eye Candy: Historic Visualization Tracks U.S. Growth from 1790 to 1890

Mark Byrnes shares news of the graphic, and how it came to the Internet, for CityLab: "Originally published in the Statistical Atlas of the United States in 1898, Larry Gormley of HistoryShots (a company that designs and restores data visualizations) first came across this old census visualization over at David Rumsey's online map database. Compelled by its restrained use of shapes, colors, and lines, Gormley, who scours map and book fairs in his native New England, eventually tracked down a printed copy to restore."

"[The visualization's] design manages to neatly display over 450 data points using only 10 colors to differentiate dozens of cities. Once the viewer adjusts their eyes to the right-to-left timeline, one can see just how much the U.S. had grown in its first full century."