Charles Minard [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard] contributed amazing work to several fields, information graphics most notably.

  Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. 
  The graphic is notable for its representation in two dimensions of six types of 
  data: the number of Napoleon's troops; distance; temperature; the latitude 
  and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates.

Fantastic work. Thank you. It's great to see in-situ.