Data Viz and Table Design from the Letterpress Era

"Statistics are far from being the barren array of figures ingeniously and laboriously combined into columns and tables, which many persons are apt to suppose them. They constitute rather the ledger of a nation, in which, like the merchant in his books, the citizen can read, at one view, all of the results of a year, or of a period of years, as compared with other periods, and deduce the profit or the loss which has been made, in morals, education, wealth or power."

-J.D. B. DeBow,

Superintendent of the Census, 1853-1854.

The United States Census has been taking data very, very seriously for a very, very long time.

Their work in graphics was top notch.

The design is so good. It's dense but readable. And it looks like no other tables we see today. Zoom in and check out these features:

1. Fits on one page! Achieving vertical responsiveness by making the font-size smaller just for this table so that it'd fit cleanly. So important when you're working with physical books and you don't want to flip the page while comparing values. Such a lost art.
2. Indexing the rows
3. Indentation for nested fields
4. No horizontal grid lines - high data-to-ink ratio
5. Very easily scannable horizontally: rows are grouped with white space in between sections so you can find your place by looking at the "3rd row in the group" without heavy grid lines
6. Row grouping semantic rather than just "every 5 rows"
7. No zebra stripes! No background colors at all
8. Dense column widths

Another one:

So much good stuff:

1. Row group titles (Fishing and mining.)
2. Indices, again! This feels like such a "computer science" artifact stuck out of time
3. Handling null values differently than white space with `...`
4. Double line vertical dividers instead of using weight

Ahhhh the density.

1. Check out that text wrap in the headers. To achieve a high density of information, they'd make the columns as wide as the numbers and wrap the words however possible.
2. These were large books and they took a lot of care to get all of the numbers on a single page. The original responsive design! Some of the tables would be printed in smaller font sizes so that it'd fit snugly in one page or neatly on two pages.

The graphs were quite nice too. Clean and high "data-to-ink-ratio" before that was even a term. I love the variable length gridlines; never seen that before.

And great subplots, too. Combining the principles of row grouping in their tables with their bar charts. That's print, for you. Same graphics engine under the hood, unlike many graphics engines today that treat tables separately from graphs.

But the density maps really take the cake. My god, gorgeous. Could you imagine if our graphing software outputted this?

The census formalized their table density in 1949 with their style guide. It's an incredible book.

The interest of the Bureau of the Census in the manner in which statistical data should be arranged and described is a reflection of its own day-to-day operations.

[...]

This manual is designed as a reference aid for use by analysts and technicians of the Bureau of the Census in the continuing effort to meet the obligations of the Bureau in this field. It is intended as an operating tool, not as a book of regulations. Absolute uniformity in presentation of the Bureau's statistics is not contemplated. However, unnecessary variations can be most easily avoided by reference to a commonly accepted norm. Within obvious limits, this manual is intended to provide that norm.

[...]

In the final analysis, there are only two rules in tabular presentation that should be applied rigidly: First, the use of common sense when planning a table, and second, the viewing of the proposed table from the standpoint of the user. The details of mechanical arrangement must be governed by a single objective; that is, to make the statistical table as easy to read and to understand as the nature of the material will permit.

J. C. CAPT, Director,
Bureau of the Census.
June, 1949

"The user". Another term that I thought was strictly from the software era.

The styleguide is hundreds of pages and breaks down the anatomy of tables.

I would've loved to be able to interview Dorothy M. Belzer:

"Her constructive suggestions, and her translation of general concepts into practical reality, have left their imprint throughout the volume."

As the decades evolve, so does the printing technology. It gets worse before it gets better.

In this era (60s, I think), the commas were unusually heavy. Does anyone know why?

And then in the 90s we're clearly in the new computer software era, 3D bar charts and all.

And of course, today in Excel. Not quite the same.

No one did it like they did in the 1950s. Dorothy M. Belzer - truly the GOAT.