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Joseph Priestley created revolutionary "maps" of time
The most significant design feature of Priestley’s chart—as historians point out—was the way in which he linked units of time to units of distance on the page, similar to the way a cartographer uses scale when creating a map.
The two-foot-by-three-foot, pastel-striped paper scroll—which contains the meticulously inscribed names of approximately 2,000 poets, artists, statesmen, and other famous historical figures dating back three millennia—is visually striking, combining a formal, somewhat ornate eighteenth-century aesthetic with the precise organization of a schematic. He was, by that point, a seasoned veteran of the era’s pamphlet wars, having embroiled himself in controversy with his 1768 A Free Address to Protestant Dissenters on the Subject of the Lord’s Supper before going on, two years later, to attack major aspects of Calvinist doctrine in An Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity. Over the next several days, widespread terror and looting would engulf Birmingham as rioters clashed with local constables, targeting and destroying some two dozen homes, businesses, and churches belonging to prominent Dissenters and supporters of the French Revolution before authorities finally called in military dragoons to restore order.
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