John Murphy on Point and Figure Charting

The first charting technique used by stock market traders before the turn of the century was point and figure charting. The actual name "point and figure" has been attributed to Victor deVilliers in his 1933 classic, The Point and Figure Method of Anticipating Price Movements. The technique has had various names over the years. In the 1880s and 1890s, it was known as the "book method". This was the name Charles Dow gave it in a July 20, 1901 editorial of the Wall Street Journal.

Dow indicated that the book method had been used for about 15 years, giving it a starting date of 1886. The name "figure charts" was used from the 1920s until 1933 when "point and figure" became the accepted name for this technique of tracking market movement. RD Wyckoff also published several works dealing with the point and figure method in the early 1930s.

The Wall Street Journal started publishing daily high, low, and closing stock prices in 1896, which is the first reference to the more commonly known bar chart. Therefore, it appears that the point and figure method predates bar charting by at least 10 years.

John Murphy, Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets