The Cartesian coordinate System was created by a sickly French man named Rene Descartes. The actual concept was first considered when he was laying on a bed one day. As he stared up at his tiled ceiling he noticed two beams, one horizontal and one vertical. While waiting for his medication he noticed a small fly flying about his room. As it passed a tile he though how wonderful it would be to be able to assign an actual number value to the point where the fly landed. This eventually led to the Cartesian coordinate System.
All the crowned heads of Europe gasped in awe.
Descartes went on to demonstrate his "coordinate system" (as he called it) for the delectation and amusement of heads of state and cafe society in all the great cities of Europe. Wearing a snappy boater and accompanied by his beautiful blonde assistant Zimroel, Decartes danced from strength to strength, from triumph to triumph, for the final forty years of his life. His passing was greeted with inconsolable grief, and forty millions of livres were subscribed by an anguished public to build an awe-inspiring brass monument to the man, a monument now found in the Tuillieries in Paris.