In 1964, William Zisman published an article in the ACS publications on the "Relation of the Equilibrium Contact Angle to Liquid and Solid Constitution". It was in this article where he used what we call today as the Zisman plot. The Zisman plot is used to very quickly give a quantitative measurement of wettability, also known as the critical surface tension, γ , of a solid surface by measuring the liquid contact angle as shown in Figure 1. Taking the cosine of said angle and then graphing it against the surface tension of the liquid wetting the solid substrate yields the critical surface tension. Wettability is a measure of how well a liquid spreads and how complete the contact of the liquid is across the surface of a solid interface. A small contact angle indicates good wettability, while a large contact angle indicates poor wettability. The critical surface tension is the highest liquid surface tension that can completely wet a specific solid surface. For adhesive bonding complete wetting is used to maximize the adhesive joint strength.  
Even though this relationship is empirical and less precise than the surface tension of a homologous series of liquids, it is very useful considering it is a parameter of the solid surface. This method is especially used to compare and measure the critical surface tension of low-energy solids (mainly plastics) very quickly and easily. Figure 4 in ZIsmans published article from 1964 shows the critical surface tension as a measure of wettability of Polyethylene. Zisman published this analysis in 1964 and used a variety of nonhomologous liquids to measure the critical surface tension of Polyethylene to be around 35 dynes per centimeter as shown by the intercept at x=1 in Figure 4. Figure 12 in Zismans 1964 article shows that different solids can also be plotted on the same graph to easily compare the critical solid surface tensions of a variety of plastic substrates including very different polymers such as teflon, acid monolayers, and esters. The ZIsman Plot proved to be a breakthrough which allowed for a very efficient way to measure wettability of a solid which helped to spawn the work of Dann in the late 1960s. Dann characterized the critical surface tensions of a variety of polymeric materials using the Zisman Plot. In modern days, David and Neumann in an investigation of contact angle on low-energy surfaces. However, today some different variations of the Zisman plot exist because the dependent variable is unitless being since it is cosine of the contact angle for the liquid.