The Anachronistic History of the Table
Many Legs, Clearly Set, And Much Older Than You Suspect
Meet Quintus Valerius Soranus, highly referenced originator of the first table. By table, we mean table of contents or list of contents as the Latin tabula meant list. At this point, we could roll on about the list and the array of interesting paths it took through history — but we have done that one before. And table has its own unique path…
As is often the case, much of what we know of ancient history (in this case 100–80BCE) was passed down by later generations. In this case, first Cicero and later Pliny the Elder. Not a bad duo as far as believable attributions go. The reason these two gentlemen mention Quintus is because his initial invention ‘set the table’ for books of much larger sizes. Geez — normally it is the French who torture us…
Now some may want to note that the Twelve Tables made their appearance nearly 400 years earlier. True enough. But tables in this case is a loose translation of Tablets — a translation that occurred much later. Further the twelve tablet simply contained written laws. No numbers. And it really on took a tabular format in artist renditions created long after the fact. And likely, using a bit of artistic license.
It is also worth noting that table, in the sense of the thing you sit at for dinner, was originally called a mensa in Latin or a board in English. The use of the word table only entered the picture in the 13th century. And likely, that was by way of Germany.
As is usually the case, German innovation seems to always touch on war. War games in this case. Boy — it feels like I have written about this before. History is so recursive!
Of course, Kriegsspiel came in 1812, so we are all anachronistic again. But German board games had a long history. Really, they were table games. Germans had a lot of wood and they were not afraid to use it. Early Kriegsspiel games required most of a tree to make.
In 1662, John Graunt and William Petty would invent the field of statistics or at least firmly ‘set the table’ for it. Their initial Life Table is considered the original milestone of statistics by many. It was a rather morbid undertaking by some accounts, but what would you expect of insurance brokers in London.
By 1665, data tables were in vogue. The term data had just recently been coined and tables became the perfect setting. A new leg of our story had begun.
This leg jumps ahead to Herman Hollerith in the late 1800s. Herman was the inventor of the tabulating machine and the tabulating system — the precursor to modern computing. Herman created his mechanism based on the punch card.
The punch card was also present earlier that century in Lovelace’s and Babbage’s Analytic Engine. Each invention was drawing on a common predecessor — the loom. Yet another invention we have already talked about. History is its own loom really, so much of it is interlaced in ways we hardly expect.
In the end, tables are just an interlacing of columns (Latin) and rows (German) tied in both their purpose and history with data and statistics. Long before any dinner was served, tables were the structures advancing education, business, and science. It is an anachronistic tale with many legs, but the course is clear — at least in the way that history sets it. Thanks for reading.
