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138 Years of
Popular Science
Collaborators:
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Mark Hansen
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Role: Design & Development
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In 2011, I was asked by the publishers of Popular Science magazine to produce a visualization piece that explored the archive of their publication. PopSci has a history that spans almost 140 years, so we knew there would be plenty of material to draw from. We ended up making a graphic that showed how different technical and cultural terms have come in and out of use in the magazine since its inception.
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The graphic is anchored by a kind of molecular chain – decade clusters in turn contain year clusters. Every atom in these year clusters is a single issue of the magazine, and is shaded with colours extracted from the issue covers via a colour clustering routine. The size of the issue-atoms is determined by the number of words in each issue.
Surrounding this chain are about 70 word frequency histograms showing the issue-by-issue usage of different terms (like ‘software’ or ‘bakelite’). We used a simple space-filling algorithm to place these neatly around the molecule chain, and to stack them so that one histogram begins shortly after another ends.
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This ended up resulting in some interesting word chains that show how technology has progressed – some that make sense (microcomputer to e-mail) and some what are more whimsical (supernatural to periscope to datsun to fax).