Graph showing England’s trade deficits and surpluses with Denmark and Norway in the 1700s by William Playfair. Playfair, who lived from 1759-1823, invented line graphs, bar graphs, and area graphs, which hugely enhanced the ability of statisticians to display their work to the public and each other. Playfair was also a secret agent for the British, successfully spreading counterfeit currency in Revolutionary France in order to cause inflation and wreck the French economy.