This article was originally written for an international group of friends and colleagues, Les Chevaliers des Albums de Statistique Graphique, formed over 20 years ago to organize the collective purchase of the albums of the same name, an exquisite sampler of the best data and map graphics of the late 1800s and perhaps of all time.

Over this time, various members of the group have organized conference sessions, written papers and books on the history of data visualization, and enjoyed each others company at Chevalier lunches and dinners. A subset of this group, Les Chevaliers des Pays Catalan, has met annually in recent years somewhere in the Catalan region of France and Spain.

For some years, it has been my annual practice to send Minard Day greetings to this group on March 27. Last year, this resulted in the article Raiders of the Lost Tombs: The Search for Some Heroes of the History of Data Visualization

Happy Minard Day, 2021 Edition

Happy Minard Day to all! Today is Charles Joseph Minard’s 240th birthday! He rests contentedly in Montparnasse Cemetery, Section 7 (48.83879° N, 2.325163° E). Birthday greetings to mailto:CJMinard@montparnasse.fr are welcome, but rarely answered. However, I do have permission to post this:

Moi, Charles-Joseph Minard, je vous souhaite de bonnes nouvelles et j’approuve ce message. Ai-je vraiment 240 ans? Le temps passe vite quand je pense à de nouvelles cartes. …

It’s been a year of COVID, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in the not too distant future. Below is some Chevalier and Minard-related News. Please share any other events, news, …

Our HUP book

My HUP book (with Howard Wainer), A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication is going to ink shortly, due to appear in June, 2021. We’re unhappy that HUP decided to only publish a limited number of color plates (I plan to put color versions on a web site).

But we are happy with the content, and very grateful to many friends who contributed in one way or another to historical understanding, scholarship, images, etc. Our debts are profound.

Related to this: a final Afterword chapter, recounting Chevalier work to discover details of the lives and burial sites of some of our heroes (Playfair, Minard, Guerry, van Langren) fell to the cutting room floor of our editor. I rescued this, and published an article on Medium, Raiders of the Lost Tombs: The Search for Some Heroes of the History of Data Visualization. This is the first official collective authorship for Les Chevaliers des Albums de Statistique Graphique.

Albums de Statistique Graphique

Not really new, but thanks again to David Rumsey (@davidrumsey), all 480 sheets of the Albums de Statistique Graphique are avaiable on his davidrumsey.com site.

Professionally cataloged, searchable, with images that can be zoomed to your heart’s content. This effectively completes my dream from ~ 1995, when Antoine de Falguerolles first showed me the copy of the 1885 Album he had found, and I set about to discover the others in the series. The rest of the story is Chevalier History.

The Minard System

Sandra Rendgen’s (@srendgen) 2018 book, The Minard System, continues to get rave reviews. More importantly, Sandra has done Minardists a great service by providing a comprehensive catalog of Minard’s graphic works. From this, we finally have an authoritative numbering system, more or less in chronological order. The Napoleon’s Russia Campaign graphic is Minard #60. Minardists can now just say Minard #48 instead of the more cumbersome Location of a New Main Post Office in Paris graphic.

As well, I see I can now buy the Kindle Edition of The Minard System for only $3.11, but I’d have to buy a 24" Color Kindle to read comfortably.

The Paris publisher Éditions B42 released a French translation of The Minard System last fall. It includes a preface by Joost Grotens, dutch designer and cartographer who has is known for several brilliant atlasses himself.

RJ Andrews, Color palettes of the Albums

Raymond Andrews (@infowetrust) has made a lovely study of the color palettes used in the Albums de Statistique Graphique. He recreated 25 color palettes used in various albums and published these as SVG vector patterns on Github.

See also RJ’s earlier study, Seeking Minard. This contains a visual catalog of all of Minard’s graphic works, plus a Youtube video of the development of Minard’s flow maps of cotton trade.

In 2020, RJ obtained a copy of Minard’s Des tableaux graphiques et des cartes figuratives. His translation and commentary, Illustration Invades Everything, gives a good sense of “what he (Minard) was thinking”.

Re-visioning Minard

In the time since I launched the Minard Challenge, new versions continue to roll in. I can no longer keep track, and haven’t been able to update that page on my server.

One of the latest, by Martin Grandjean (@GrandjeanMartin) is particularly nice: Minard’s map vectorized & revisited. It is available in vectorized (SVG) format, as well as high-resolution PNG, together with several related versions.

Martin also created an SVG version of Minard’s Map of World Migration in 1852 shown above.

Minard Vis in R (MinR’d)

David Schoch (@schochastics) has taken the idea of recreating Minard’s works further, following Sandra Rendgen’s numbering system, and trying to recreate these in very high resolution using R. Thirteen of the 61 Minard graphs are avaiable on his web page http://minard.schochastics.net/.

These are not yet in an R package, but are available on Github.

The collection includes an animated version of a flow map inspired by Minard, showing exports of French wine from 2000-2018.

ENPC Collection

Not to be forgotten (thx: @Gui_DesPonts): The École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées has long been maintained an archival collection containing their entire collection of digital works of Minard. They recently prepared an exhibit, Cartes et documents de Ch.-J. Minard, showcasing Minard’s work.

One of the best is the short book, Des tableaux graphiques et des cartes figuratives This was recently translated and illustrated by RJ Andrews, Illustration Invades Everything.

Paul Kahn – Touching Minard

Paul Kahn recently described a 2020 visit to the ENPC to view the original work of Minard and Léon Lallanne in the Archives of the ENPC, Touching Minard. The illustrations shown in that article give perhaps a small sense of the awe one feels in viewing the originals in the archive of the ENPC.

Minard in the movies

In the last year, Robert Kosara (@eagereyes) made a Youtube video, Minard’s Famous “Napoleon’s March” Chart – What It Shows, What It Doesn’t. Among other things he presents some interesting historical details from the Russian side of the 1812 Moscow campaign.

For background music, I suggest The 1812 Overture with Canons. Tchaikovsky wrote the overture to celebrate the Russian victory at the battle of Borodino.

Also on the Minard Channel is the Numberphile The Greatest Ever Infographic.

TODO: A Plaque for Minard

Charles-Joseph Minard is a hero of Paris and of France, in the history of the engineers of the ENPC and among those who still find his graphic work inspiring. It is therefore very surprising that there is no monument to Minard, no “Place Minard” or “Parc Minard” in Paris, not even a plaque on a wall somewhere, saying “Minard Lived Here!”

Even Sigmund Freud has a plaque outside the Hotel du Bresil (near Jardin de Luxembourg), and you can book his room! Not far from Buttes Chaument and Pré-Saint-Gervais, you can walk along Rue Sigmund Freud.

Some years ago, Antoine de Falguerolles discovered a notice of publication of one of Minard’s works and in the Annales des Ponts et Chaussées 1845, p. 18, giving his address as 36 rue du Bac. We’re still waiting to be able to put a plaque on the door.

Other News

Michael’s Zoom Birthday

Michael Greenacre (@mixmickle) recently celebrated his three-score-and-ten with a Zoom birthday bash. There were over 40 participants, geographically spanning most of the world. It was lovely to see so many friends who all connect through Michael.

Michael also made a 3-minute Youtube video summary of his talk at an Ecology in R conference.

Cuvee Chavaliers

It has been nearly two years since some of us last met for a Chevalier lunch in Vic, hosted by Pere Millan (@sciencegraph). As a memento, above is the label from the 2018 vindage, Cuvee Chevaliers des Pays Catalan.

RJ may recognize a copy of his Route map of history of data visualization in the photo below. Until we meet again….