History of pie chart

The earliest known pie chart is generally credited to William Playfair's Statistical Breviary of 1801, in which two such graphs are used.^[1][2][9] Playfair presented an illustration, which contained a series of pie charts. One of those charts depicting the proportions of the Turkish Empire located inAsia, Europe and Africa before 1789. This invention was not widely used at first;^[1]

Early types of pie charts in the 19th century
Pie charts from William Playfair's "Statistical Breviary", 1801  One of the pie charts, 1801  Minard's map, 1858  Polar chart by Florence Nightingale, 1858

The French engineer Charles Joseph Minardwas one of the first to use pie charts in 1858, in particular in maps. Minard's map, 1858 used pie charts to represent the cattle sent from all around France for consumption inParis (1858).

Playfair thought that pie charts were in need of a third dimension to add additional information.^[10] It has been said that Florence Nightingale invented it, though in fact she just popularised it and she was later assumed to have created it due to the obscurity of Playfair's creation.^[11]