# Who was the first known mathematician to graph an equation?

A friend of mine pointed out that there were no graphs in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. This surprised me because René Descartes (1596-1650) is well known as being the inventor of the coordinate plane, but I understand now he never actually graphed an equation.

Who was the first known mathematician to graph an equation? And if it differs, who was the first to “popularize” them?

• Descartes does not draw "cartesian" axes. Of course, in his Géometrie there are diagrams of curves. Jan 13, 2018 at 9:17
• See e.g. the post cartesian-coordinate-system-in-newtons-work fore some details and references. Jan 13, 2018 at 9:18
• Possible duplicate of When do we see for the first time the use of the Cartesian plane? Bar graphs appear in Oresme's work to show dependence of speed on time in uniformly accelerated motion. Some constructions in Apollonius's Conics (c. 200 BC) can be interpreted as "graphing equations", although he did not think of them that way. Jan 14, 2018 at 8:16