4 ms·

One Beautiful Attempt to Fit the US Civil War into a Single Chart

28 points by jstalin 13y ago

dnlbyl 13y ago
The word beautiful is starting to lose all meaning.
- matthewdavis 13y ago
  It was a beautiful attempt.
losethos 13y ago
Da nigger does not listen. The nigger does not speak English. You gotta speak louder so the nigger can hear.
dalek_cannes 13y ago
Compressing the two spatial dimensions of a map into the x-axis and using the y-axis for time is in fact a beautiful way to present events over time and space. I needed to do this in a project a few weeks ago and I don't know why this didn't occur to me. This is so much better than a dynamic map with a time slider.
akdetrick 13y ago
Amazing. Under "other states", I noticed a few minor engagements in "CA". I wondered if I had read that right - California? This ended up bringing me to an article[1] about California's involvement in the Civil War, a state that I had previously written off as uninvolved in the conflict. Not only was there a significant union fort in what is now Los Angeles, but they had camels(!?) for desert operations. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/arts/artsspecial/heralding-californias-little-known-role-in-the-civil-war.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/arts/artsspecial/heralding...
ctdonath 13y ago
http://wigwags.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/review-of-history-shots-history-of-the-union-army-american-civil-war-1861-1865/ http://wigwags.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/review-of-history-sh... is Edward Tufte's take on Larry Gormley's similar infographic analysis of the same event.
cantrevealname 13y ago
I noticed an odd omission in the tables at the bottom of the chart: Statistics (Federal) No. of Men Enlisted 2,850,000 Statistics (Confederate) No. of Men Enlisted <blank> I wonder why why the number of Confederate men enlisted was not shown.
dnautics 13y ago
interesting that in 1897, they thought that "gold value of paper money" was an important metric.
- mcguire 13y ago
  Well, technically, in 1897, it was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  It was important because the gold value of paper money could probably be considered a bet on who was going to win the war. Check out Neil Furgason's The Ascent of Money.
robby1066 13y ago
I have this poster hanging on my wall. It's a great reminder of two things: 1. you CAN pack a lot of information in a single piece. 2. you rarely, if ever SHOULD pack this much information into a single piece. "A beautiful attempt" is a really good way to characterize it.

28 points by jstalin 13y ago

dnlbyl 13y ago

The word beautiful is starting to lose all meaning.

matthewdavis 13y ago
It was a beautiful attempt.

losethos 13y ago

Da nigger does not listen. The nigger does not speak English. You gotta speak louder so the nigger can hear.

dalek_cannes 13y ago

Compressing the two spatial dimensions of a map into the x-axis and using the y-axis for time is in fact a beautiful way to present events over time and space. I needed to do this in a project a few weeks ago and I don't know why this didn't occur to me. This is so much better than a dynamic map with a time slider.

akdetrick 13y ago

Amazing. Under "other states", I noticed a few minor engagements in "CA". I wondered if I had read that right - California? This ended up bringing me to an article[1] about California's involvement in the Civil War, a state that I had previously written off as uninvolved in the conflict. Not only was there a significant union fort in what is now Los Angeles, but they had camels(!?) for desert operations. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/arts/artsspecial/heralding-californias-little-known-role-in-the-civil-war.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/arts/artsspecial/heralding...

ctdonath 13y ago

http://wigwags.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/review-of-history-shots-history-of-the-union-army-american-civil-war-1861-1865/ http://wigwags.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/review-of-history-sh... is Edward Tufte's take on Larry Gormley's similar infographic analysis of the same event.

cantrevealname 13y ago

I noticed an odd omission in the tables at the bottom of the chart: Statistics (Federal) No. of Men Enlisted 2,850,000 Statistics (Confederate) No. of Men Enlisted <blank> I wonder why why the number of Confederate men enlisted was not shown.

dnautics 13y ago

interesting that in 1897, they thought that "gold value of paper money" was an important metric.

mcguire 13y ago
Well, technically, in 1897, it was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
wtvanhest 13y ago
It was important because the gold value of paper money could probably be considered a bet on who was going to win the war. Check out Neil Furgason's The Ascent of Money.

robby1066 13y ago

I have this poster hanging on my wall. It's a great reminder of two things: 1. you CAN pack a lot of information in a single piece. 2. you rarely, if ever SHOULD pack this much information into a single piece. "A beautiful attempt" is a really good way to characterize it.