About mindmaps of old

Milestones and keystones in the history of mindmapping

It is still subject to debate. Who invented mindmapping? This mindmap (click to enlarge) ‘20 centuries of mindmapping’ gives a straight answer by looking at the ‘firsts’.

• The first notion of the term mind map you will find in the book of Charles Williams.
• The first mind maps as we know them appear around 1200, mainly to memorize texts better.
• The first mind map in the twentieth century is by Walt Disney (not only great mind map, but also the first cross medial strategy).
• The first radial concept is from Evelyn Wood.
• The first mind map as we know it, is from Tony Buzan.
• The first mind map book is by Tony Buzan.
• The first computer mind map is from Peter Barrett.

So I would say mindmapping has many fathers, only it is fair to say that Buzan pushed its popularity and making it into a mainstream technique as it is now.

What I do want to stress, however, is that there are (roughly) two approaches in mindmapping: the almost linear mind maps (they look radial, but the subbranches are equal to lines in normal texts) and the truly organic looking mindmaps. The first leads back to the work of Evelyn Wood, the second to Tony Buzan. I did research on this topic, and organic mind maps work much stronger than the non-organic.  That’s why I prefer MyThoughts or iMindmap over all kinds of mind map software versions, and Mapul over Mindmeister.

This mindmap was inspired by the timeline of Pascal Venier (http://www.visualmapper.blogspot.com/), the excellent information, I think they were one of the firsts with all kinds of historical references on mindmapping.org combined with the stuff I drop now and then in my mindmap trainings.