A spy, a scoundrel, and a scholar
William Playfair was all three. He led an extraordinary life at the heart of many of the great events of the 18th and 19th centuries, mostly in morally dubious roles. Among all the intrigue, scandal, and indebtedness, he found time to invent the bar and pie charts, and make pioneering use of line charts. As we'll see, he was quite a character.
Playfair the scoundrel
Playfair's lifetime (1759-1823) contained some momentous events:
The development of the steam engine
The French revolution
American independence and the establishment of a new US government
The introduction of paper money
and in different ways, some of them fraudulent, Playfair played a role.
He was born in 1759 in Dundee, Scotland, and due to his father's death, he was apprenticed to the inventor of the threshing machine at age 13. From there, he went to work for one of the leading producers of steam engines, James Watt. So far, this is standard "pull yourself up by your bootstraps with family connections" stuff. Things started to go awry when he moved to London in 1782 where he set up a silversmith company and was granted several patents. The business failed with some hints of impropriety, which was a taste of things to come.
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