Touching Minard

An examination of the original diagrams by Charles-Joseph Minard, and related materials by Léon Lalanne and Émile Cheysson in the ENPC Archives

The author at ENPC library, opening a mounted diagram from the Cartes figuratives (1853–1863) box. The Tableaux Graphiques et Cartes Figuratives par M. Minard portfolio is open in the foreground.

NOTE: In the interest of consistency, throughout this essay I identify Minard’s diagrams using the number (preceded by #) and English name assigned by Sandra Rendgen in The Minard System: The Complete Statistical Graphics of Charles-Joseph Minard [1], along with their French titles.

The Man and the School

I wanted to visit and touch a Minard. I have seen his work reproduced in many books. I have copied digital images of Mindard’s drawings from library websites and used them in presentations. I have assigned graduate students to study Minard and do presentations about his work for my information design history seminar. I have studied writing about Minard by Marey [2], Funkhouser [3], Robinson [4], Tufte [5]–[7], Friendly [8] and others [9]–[13]. Recently I have read and re-read The Minard System [1], the first comprehensive collection of all his drawings. Though I knew where the drawings were archived, I had never bothered to see the original prints.