THE CENSUS HAS PLAYED SUCH A UBIQUITOUS role in framing our nation's self-image that it usually goes unnoticed and uncredited. However, the census has been one of the nation's most important sources of information, not only carving out entirely new methods and technologies for collecting population data, but broughing this data to the American people in a way they had never seen before. Census publications evolved from ad hoc and unread prints of just a few pages in 1790, to thousand-page reports, graphs and maps read by every public official and absorbed into every corner of public consciousness.