The Lost Art of Nomography

Nomography, truly a forgotten art, is the graphical representation of mathematical relationshipsor laws (the Greekwordfor law is nomos). These graphs are variously called nomograms (the term used here), nomographs, alignment charts, and abacs. This area of practical and theoretical mathematics was invented in 1880 by Maurice d'Ocagne (1862-1938) and used extensively into the 1970s to provide engineers with fast graphical calculations of complicated formulas to a practical precision.