Wilhelm Schickard creates a gear-based, wooden, six-digit, mechanical adding machine.
Robert Cawdrey publishes a dictionary with definitions for 2,543 terms.
Kepler's Rudolphine Tables list the positions of 1,406 stars and procedures for locating the planets.
John Napier publishes the first tables of logarithms.
René Descartes introduces coordinate systems to allow geometry to be studied using algebra.
William Petty, traveling with Cromwell's army, systematically surveys the profitability of land in Ireland.
Leibniz promotes the idea of answering all human questions by converting them to a universal symbolic language, then applying logic using a machine. He also tries to organize the systematic collection of knowledge to use in such a system.
A record is started that continues today.
Edmond Halley creates a map showing prevailing winds at different locations.
Graunt and others start to systematically summarize demographic and economic data using statistical ideas based on mathematics.
Newton introduces the idea that mathematical rules can be used to systematically compute the behavior of systems in nature.
Joseph de la Vega's book Confusion of Confusions describes fluctuations in Dutch stock market prices.
John Wilkins suggests a "philosophical language" in which concepts are encoded by pronouncable phonemes.
Benjamin Franklin publishes the first edition of his popular yearly (1732–1758) almanac.
Linnaeus systematizes the classification of living organisms, introducing ideas like binomial naming.
Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas graphically illustrates socioeconomic data and invents the pie chart.
The British Museum is founded as a "universal museum" to collect every kind of object, natural and artificial.
Munehisa Homma uses an early candlestick chart for prices in the Japanese rice market.
Robert Bailey Thomas begins publication of the still-extant Farmer's Almanac.
France becomes the first nation to officially adopt the metric system of measurement.
The Encyclopædia Britannica—and the Encyclopædie of Diderot and d'Alembert—attempts to summarize all current knowledge in book form.
James Watt and John Southern create (but keep secret for 24 years) a device for automatically tracing variation of pressure with volume in a steam engine.
The US (1785) and UK (1791) governments begin creating detailed systematic maps of their countries.
This art-quality 4'10" x 16" poster timeline of the History of Systematic Data and the Development of Computable Knowledge includes nearly 200 entries spanning millennia of events that have shaped the modern world of data and knowledge. Presented in its original version at the 2010 Wolfram Data Summit, this fascinating and impressive large-scale poster is the perfect piece of intellectual art for your library, office, or other wall, and is a unique gift for any enthusiast of data, technology, and its history.
