This graph shows the result each country got in its first participation in the Eurovision song contest.
Because the amount of competitor rose so much over the decades (originally, there were just 7 competitors, while now, there are regularly over 40), just taking the place each country got wouldn’t be accurate or fair - even the last place back then would be much higher than a really good result now.
Therefore, I took the relative placement: The first place is 100% and the last place is 0%. This is more fair since it takes into account how many people have participated and accurately shows how good a country really was in the contest.

Some countries with special circumstances are marked with an asterisk and slashes in the line.
For one, this is Switzerland 1956 who won the first contest (which some could be argue is kind of unfair because one country had to win it). Additionally, it won with a shady voting system since the Swiss jury had twice the voting power and juries could vote for the own country.
The other countries marked are the countries who participated in the first contest 1956. The exact results of it have never been published (just the winner); therefore their real first result is unknown. Instead, I took their results in the second contest (which they all participated in).
I also included Switzerland 1957 because of the special circumstances of their win in 1956.

The country bars are also marked in different colours. This is to easily show the type of their placements: Blue bars represent countries whose first participation was before the introduction of semifinals. Green bars represent countries who qualified to the final in their first participation. Red bars represent countries who failed to qualify to the final in their first participation.