Humboldt and Bonpland's Naturgemälde of the Tropics, 1807
The Naturgemälde from Humboldt and Bonpland's Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen, published in 1807: Chimborazo drawn in cross-section with vegetation zones, temperature, pressure and humidity ranged in columns beside it. It is a mountain used as a graph — an expedition's measurements turned into a single argument about how nature is organised.
The German expeditions to Spanish America went out with barometers, hygrometers, sextants and thermometers rather than with an expectation of conquest, and their product was numbers. What made Humboldt's account different from earlier travel writing was the decision to plot those numbers rather than narrate them: altitude against species, latitude against temperature, one plate that could be read faster than a chapter. The copy shown here is in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. See German scientific expeditions to South America.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
