Graphics

Graphics (from Ancient Greek (graphikós) pertaining to drawing, painting, writing, etc.) are visual images or designs on some surface. Such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture. In typesetting and the graphic arts, and in educational and recreational software. Images that are generated by a computer are called computer graphics.

Graphics often combine text, illustration, and color. It can be functional or artistic. The latter can be a recorded version, such as a photograph, or interpretation by a scientist to highlight essential features. Or an artist, in which case the distinction with imaginary graphics may become blurred. It can also be used for architecture.

History

The earliest graphics known to anthropologists studying prehistoric periods are cave paintings and markings on boulders, bone, ivory, and antlers. They were created during the Upper Palaeolithic period from 40,000 to 10,000 B.C. or earlier. Many of these were found to record astronomical, seasonal, and chronological details. Some of the earliest graphics and drawings are known to the modern world. From almost 6,000 years ago, are that of engraved stone tablets and ceramic cylinder seals, marking the beginning of the historical periods and the keeping of records for accounting and inventory purposes.

Records from Egypt predate these and papyrus was used by the Egyptians as a material on which to plan the building of pyramids. They also used slabs of limestone and wood. From 600 to 250 BC, the Greeks played a major role in geometry. They used graphics to represent their mathematical theories such as the Circle Theorem and the Pythagorean theorem.

In art, “graphics” is often used to distinguish work in a monotone and made up of lines, as opposed to painting.