VizWorld.com

If you’ve ever been to one of Edward Tufte’s seminars, you were probably caught off guard when the whitecoats begin moving through the aisles, carrying ancient manuscripts from the likes of Galileo and Playfair that are the original books of what he’s showing on overhead slides.  It’s a powerful experience that amazing everyone in the room.

However, on December 2nd, Edward Tufte put his impressive collection of historical books and art up for auction at Christies.  Bioephemera describes the auction:

There appear to be 160 lots; Tufte’s website describes it as “200 rare books, including major works in the history of science, statistical graphics, 20th-century artists books, ET artworks, Sidereus Nuncius (1610), Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499).” Apparently Tufte intends to use the proceeds to fund his gallery ET Modern, among other art projects.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know about this earlier.  You can view the “Catalog” of the auction at this link.

ET went on his own website to discuss why he put these masterpieces up for auction:

Great books foster, transmit, and preserve forever knowledge. The books in my research library were always meant to be used: read, skimmed, read aloud, exhibited, photographed, scanned, shared, treasured. And thus my library, which I thought of as The Museum of Cognitive Art, participated intensely in my research, scholarship, writing, teaching, design, artwork. For 30 years, the workaday presence of these wonderful books in my life was inspiring and challenging.

If you want to know what they went for, hit this link at Christies.  In total, it looks like he made a smooth $1.8Mil, with Galileo’s ‘Sidereus nuncius magna, longeque admirabilia’ bringing in $662,500.

via Edward Tufte auctions off his library : bioephemera.

Science auction, books, historic, tufte

The New York Times has a nice writeup on the visualization of slave populations that resulted from the 1860 Census, which is believed to be the first time shading was used to indicate the concentration of slavery.  Regions like the Mississippi River are almost entirely black, while states like Missouri and Tennessee are almost entirely white.

The map reaffirmed the belief of many in the Union that secession was driven not by a notion of “state rights,” but by the defense of a labor system. A table at the lower edge of the map measured each state’s slave population, and contemporaries would have immediately noticed that this corresponded closely to the order of secession. South Carolina, which led the rebellion, was one of two states which enslaved a majority of its population, a fact starkly represented on the map.

Unfortunately, the NYTimes “blowup” of the map obscures it’s natural beauty with some interactive icons and features.  I managed to find a slightly higher-resolution version at JimZellArt.com , shown below.

Click for Larger Size

via Visualizing Slavery – NYTimes.com.

Graphics historic, map, nytimes, slavery

Science Fiction website io9 has some news about some scientific discoveries made by a variety of institutes that can be combined to recreate the actual color of ancient paintings and statues.  Combining Ultraviolet light technology with Infrared and X-Ray Spectroscopy they can determine exactly what materials were used in creation of the paint, accurately reconstructing not only the basic colors but the actual hues.

Spectroscopy relies on the fact that atoms are picky when it comes to what kind of incoming energy they absorb. Certain materials will only accept certain wavelengths of light. Everything else they reflect. Spectroscopes send out a variety of wavelengths, like scouts into a foreign land. Inevitably, a few of these scouts do not come back. By noting which wavelengths are absorbed, scientists can determine what materials the substance is made of. Infrared helps determine organic compounds. X-rays, because of their higher energy level, don’t stop for anything less than the heavier elements, like rocks and minerals. Together, researchers can determine approximately what color a millennia-old statue was painted.

via Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked.

Science historic

As US Airways 1549 made it’s historic plunge into the Hudson River, data was being collected from radar stations, NEXRAD weather stations, and many other sources in real-time.  The NSTB and Exosphere3D have combined all of this into an animation of the various sources showing the accident with startling detail.

The quality of these visualizations is meant to withstand the rigors of qualification for presentation either as demonstrative evidence or, if sufficient witness testimony is available, real evidence. Interestingly, “The raw data files for each radar facility are more than 1 million lines each and must be sorted and reduced into meaningful information before they can be plotted on a map.”

The results are available on their website as a collection of high-resolution Youtube videos.

Visually Reconstructing Flight US Airways 1549 (Landing in the Hudson) via - information aesthetics.

Graphics, Science exosphere3d, historic, hudson, video