Lines, Bars and Circles: How William Playfair Invented Graphs

Lines, Bars, and Circles is a book written by Helaine Becker. It is a short biography of William Playfair, the first person to create graphs. He did this because the graphs would make it easier to read scientific information and to read math, too. William Playfair did not have an easy early life because he had to move from job to job. Why? Because he got bored easily and he wanted to become rich and famous. Also, some people didn’t think his graphs (and there was more than one kind that he made!) were all that great. About one hundred years after his death, and after going through the Industrial Revolution (and meeting James Watt!) and the French Revolution, Playfair’s graphs became popular and were used by scientists and mathematicians all over the world. So this is a book about graphs, and there is a graph in the middle of the book. It is very important that Playfair invented graphs! People who like math and science would probably enjoy this book.