A slideshow of images from the coming book, "100 Diagrams That Changed the World," including early sketches of an Apple computer and the cave paintings found in Chauvet, France.

A picture, the old adage goes, is worth 1,000 words. But in science a diagram can describe things that transcend the written word. A single image can convey the simple underlying pattern hidden by ...

For example, the book’s version of the global wealth pyramid has to deploy an inset to subdivide the 1.9mn people at the top. There are too few of them to do this neatly on the main chart.