"But another aspect of Clark's career is particularly relevant to the History of Science Collection at the Linda Hall Library, in an unfortunate way. Clark was an ardent book collector, and before his death he had amassed one of the world’s finest collections of books, pamphlets, and periodicals related to the history of electricity, magnetism, and telegraphy. After his death, the collection was bought in 1901 by a New Jersey engineer, Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, who then gave it by bequest to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York City, where it became known as the “Wheeler Gift”. In 1909, a thick two-volume catalog was published, describing almost 6000 items, many of them incredibly scarce (second image):

"When the Engineering Societies Library (ESL) was established in 1913, to consolidate the individual libraries of various engineering groups in New York, the Wheeler collection was merged into the ESL general collection. After many years, it was decided in 1995 to transfer the entire Engineering Societies Library to the Linda Hall Library. But the Wheeler Gift could not be included, due to a clause in the terms of the original Wheeler Gift, which specified: “The Library to remain in New York City and to be a reference library, free to all, including non-members and available for consultation at least three days in the week and some evenings and some Sundays, as soon as the Institute is in permanent quarters.” So the Wheeler Gift did not come to Kansas City, but was transferred to the New York Public Library where, 22 years later, it still sits, unaccessioned, unavailable (in spite of the terms of the gift) and generally unacknowledged, unless things have changed in the last few years, which we hope they have. It is quite an amazing collection, and we often lament that that the Wheeler Gift, the crown jewel of Latimer Clark’s legacy, got away."

“In the Autumn of 1862, the governments of France and Great Britain proposed to Russia, in a formal but not in an official way, the joint recognition by European powers of the independence of the Confederate States of America. My immediate answer was: `I will not cooperate in such action; and I will not acquiesce. On the contrary, I shall accept the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States by France and Great Britain as a casus belli for Russia. And in order that the governments of France and Great Britain may understand that this is no idle threat; I will send a Pacific fleet to San Francisco and an Atlantic fleet to New York…All this I did because of love for my own dear Russia… I acted thus because I understood that Russia would have a more serious task to perform if the American Republic, with advanced industrial development were broken up and Great Britain should be left in control of most branches of modern industrial development.” "

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, perhaps President Donald Trump’s most bitter rival, has publicly declared she will nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize if he successfully ends the war in Ukraine without forcing the country to surrender territory to Russia."

Raw Count Story (Blue):

Suggests intellectual progress accelerates over time
Modern era appears to be the golden age of human achievement
20th century peaks with 69 authorities
Ancient world seems intellectually sparse

Per Capita Story (Purple):

Reveals the ancient world's extraordinary intellectual concentration
3rd century BC peaks at 100 authorities per million people
Modern era shows dramatic decline in per-capita intellectual prominence
Only the 17th century Scientific Revolution approaches ancient levels

The Paradox:
The same data tells opposite stories depending on the lens. This highlights fundamental questions about how we measure intellectual achievement:

Is absolute contribution what matters, or relative density?
Does population growth dilute individual historical significance?
Are we comparing across different scales of human organization?
Does historical filtering favor ancient figures whose work survived millennia?

The visualization demonstrates how normalization can completely reverse our interpretation of historical patterns, revealing that the "explosion" of modern knowledge may actually represent a dilution of individual intellectual prominence in an increasingly populous world.