People have been using big data for centuries. Here is the first example

John Graunt, a London haberdasher born in 1620, was the first person to use Big Data, as he started putting together information about how the city residents died, in an effort to gain a broader understanding about the causes of death and the way people lived. He thus gave authorities a great tool that would lead to public health innovations, as well as a historical document depicting life and death in 17th century London.

John Graunt first published the Natural and Political Observations Made Upon Bills of Mortality in 1662 and then revised it several times with new information. “In the landmark report, Graunt calculated death rates, identified variations by subset and pioneered the use of life tables, which show predicted mortality for each age group,” writes Jennie Cohen for History.com.

London issued a weekly report called the  “bills of mortality” specifying the number of people that had died in the preceding week, who they were and how they had died, as well as the number of births and christenings. This practice had started in the 1500s, when the city was facing recurring epidemics of bubonic plague, according to The Royal Society of Medicine.

Overworked clerks lacking medical training recorded some unusual causes of death, such as Horsehoehead, Eaten by Lice and Rising of the Lights. “Other more tersely described causes include Overjoy, Purples and Teeth,” writes the society.

Although the bills were not including very descriptive causes of death, they were widely printed and distributed, thus helping warning people about plague outbreaks, as readers could see whether the outbreaks were occurring close to their homes and be better prepared.

Graunt collected the information into a number of tables, including one that showed the causes of death for Londoners over the years. His research was later published in a book that included commentary on the data as well.

“The book came about because Graunt realised that the data being collected in parishes in and around London was open to analysis and interpretation by the new class of ‘natural philosophers,’ or scientists, who, amongst other things, had founded the Royal Society in 1660,” Keith Moore, head of library and archives at the Royal Society, told Cohen.

“Graunt also included commentary on daily life in a teeming urban centre that was quickly outgrowing its medieval infrastructure, noting, ‘The old Streets are unfit for the present frequency of Coaches,’” Cohen writes. “He speculated that overpopulation and squalid conditions accounted for Londoners’ mediocre health and frequent bouts with plague, foreshadowing the work of early epidemiologists.”

Although he was not the first Londoner to use tables (those were the Romans), he was the first to create and widely distribute a life table for a recognisably modern city—and his book went beyond life tables. It “is occasionally curious but most often impressive, even from a perspective of three hundred years,” write demographers Kenneth Wachter and Hervé Le Bras. “Graunt culled a remarkable amount of information from the christening and death lists begun in the later plague period and usually understood its implications,” they concluded.