NASA Graphics Standards Manual (1976) [pdf]

It's all about typography, logos and page layout, not data presentation, as I suspected.

I was at my first job out of the service at that time, and when I drew an xy graph, my boss of umptey-ump years at the company was astounded. So, there must have been a history (the company was founded in 1892) of standards for data presentation. This was WAY before Edward Tufte. [0]

And no orientation or onboarding. This was the 70's. Sink or swim.

I never did find any standards book (pre-internet, where do you look?) before finding a better job. Come to think of it, in my entire career, I had no orientation at all except at Sun Microsystems, and that includes a raft of different organizations and companies.

I always found a way.

[0] https://www.edwardtufte.com/books/