Some consider this to be the first formal definition of a construct recognizable as a knowledge graph:
MS 514: “Existential Graphs” by Charles Sanders Peirce, circa 1882. It was published later within New Elements of Mathematics.
Are there other references about knowledge graphs prior to Gruber1993 ?
FWIW, I worked with Lenat, and his blackboard projects AM and Eurisko date to the mid-1970s, although he wasn’t explicit about using graphs (it was implied).
Take a look at this: http://knowledgegraph.today/
The final version of the paper will appear in Communications of ACM March 2021 issue.
(Disclaimer: I’m the author of that paper)
Thank you Juan, and congrats on your forthcoming CACM article. I especially appreciate the historical trace of data management concepts evolving, and the many primary sources. We’ll reference this in an upcoming book project.
BTW, if it helps, here’s a recent report/mini-book that also traces a “generation” view of data management: Fifty Years of Data Management and Beyond
(Congratulations Juan!) For history, I really like Appendix A, “Background” of the Schloss Dagstuhl Knowledge Graph paper at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.02320.pdf. (Coauthored by Juan!)
It starts off with Aristotle, Sylvester (who I was unfamiliar with), Peirce, and Frege, and has these subsections:
A.1 Historical Perspective
A.2 “Knowledge Graphs”: Pre 2012
A.3 “Knowledge Graphs”: 2012 Onwards
I like how sections A.2 and A.3 relate the general ideas of “Knowledge Graphs” to the evolution of the term as a buzz phrase.