Original Periodic Table, by Dmitri Mendeleev (1869)

Just as Da Vinci’s anatomy drawings helped doctors visualize what they were working on, so too did Dmitri Mendeleev’s efforts to organize what we knew of the elements into a rational data table. Mendeleev established the periodic table in the mid-nineteenth century, organizing the known elements and predicting more that have since been discovered. This table first appeared in a form that doesn’t look much like a table - it comes from a manuscript draft. The Periodic Table, which all schoolchildren memorize today, is one of the earliest examples of an infographic helping people to understand a scientific discipline.