The visualization of spatial knowledge is so common today that we rarely give it a second thought. But it depends upon the fairly recent recognition that maps are not just representations of the landscape, but also tools of analysis. By the end of the eighteenth century, Americans and Europeans began to use maps and other graphic tools to harvest data about the natural world. In the United States, this experimentation was prompted by political independence and the attendant need to govern the population, master the natural environment, facilitate white settler expansion, and establish agricultural self-sufficiency. To navigate this volatility, individuals began to experiment with visual and spatial representation from 1790 to the 1810s, and when considered together their efforts suggest a new era of visual thinking.

空间知识的可视化在今天如此普遍，以至于我们很少再考虑它。但这取决于最近的认识，即地图不仅是景观的表示，而且还是分析工具。到 18 世纪末，美国人和欧洲人开始使用地图和其他图形工具来收集有关自然界的数据。在美国，这一实验是由政治独立和随之而来的管理人口、掌握自然环境、促进白人定居者扩张和建立农业自给自足的需要推动的。为了驾驭这种波动，从 1790 年到 1810 年代，人们开始尝试视觉和空间表现，综合考虑，他们的努力表明了视觉思维的新时代。