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A timeline is a display of a list of events in
chronological Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. ...
order. It is typically a
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
showing a long bar labelled with
dates Date or dates may refer to: *Date (fruit), the fruit of the date palm (''Phoenix dactylifera'') Social activity *Dating, a form of courtship involving social activity, with the aim of assessing a potential partner **Group dating * Play date, a ...
paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale representing time, suiting the subject and data; many use a
linear Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship (''function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear r ...
scale, in which a unit of distance is equal to a set amount of time. This timescale is dependent on the events in the timeline. A
timeline of evolution The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, main ...
can be over millions of years, whereas a
timeline for the day of the September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks of 2001, in addition to being a unique act of terrorism, constituted a media event on a scale not seen since the advent of Satellite television, civilian global satellite links. Instant worldwide reaction and debate wer ...
can take place over minutes, and that of an explosion over milliseconds. While many timelines use a linear timescale—especially where very large or small timespans are relevant --
logarithmic timeline A logarithmic timeline is a timeline laid out according to a logarithmic scale. This necessarily implies a zero point and an infinity point, neither of which can be displayed. The most natural zero point is the Big Bang, looking forward, but ...
s entail a logarithmic scale of time; some "hurry up and wait" chronologies are depicted with
zoom lens A zoom lens is a mechanical assembly of lens elements for which the focal length (and thus angle of view) can be varied, as opposed to a fixed-focal-length (FFL) lens (see prime lens). A true zoom lens, also called a parfocal lens, is one ...
metaphors A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with ...
.


History

Time and space In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why differen ...
, particularly the line, are intertwined concepts in human thought. The line is ubiquitous in clocks in the form of a circle, time is spoken of in terms of length, intervals, a before and an after. The idea of orderly, segmented time is also represented in almanacs, calendars, charts, graphs, genealogical and evolutionary trees, where the line is central. Originally, chronological events were arranged in a mostly textual form. This took form in
annals Annals ( la, annāles, from , "year") are a concise historical record in which events are arranged chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record. Scope The nature of the distinction between ann ...
, like
king lists King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...
. Alongside them, the
table Table may refer to: * Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs * Table (landform), a flat area of land * Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns * Table (database), how the table data ...
was used like in the Greek tables of Olympiads and Roman lists of consuls and triumphs. Annals had little
narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
and noted what happened to people, making no distinction between natural and human actions. In Europe, from the 4th century, the dominant chronological notation was the table. This can be partially credited to
Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian ...
who laid out the relations between Jewish, pagan, and Christian histories in parallel columns, culminating in the Roman Empire, according to the Christian view when Christ was born to spread salvation as far as possible. His work was widely copied and was among the first printed books. This served the idea of Christian world history and providential time. The table is easy to produce, append, and read with indices, so it also fit the
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
scholars' absorption of a wide variety of sources with its focus on commonalities. These uses made the table with years in one column and places of events(kingdoms) on the top the dominant visual structure of time. By the seventeenth century, historians had started to claim that chronology and geography were the two sources of precise information which bring order to the chaos of history. In geography, Renaissance mapmakers updated Ptolemy's maps and the map became a symbol of the power of monarchs, and knowledge. Likewise, the idea that a singular chronology of world history from contemporary sources is possible affected historians. The want for precision in chronology gave rise to adding historical eclipses to tables, like in the case of
Gerardus Mercator Gerardus Mercator (; 5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was a 16th-century geographer, cosmographer and Cartography, cartographer from the County of Flanders. He is most renowned for creating the Mercator 1569 world map, 1569 world map based on ...
. Various graphical experiments emerged, from fitting the whole of history on a calendar year to series of historical drawings, in the hopes of making a metaphorical map of time. Developments in printing and engraving that made practical larger and more detailed book illustrations allowed these changes, but in the seventeenth century, the table with some modifications continued to dominate. The modern timeline emerged in
Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...
's ''
A Chart of Biography In 1765, 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley published ''A Chart of Biography'' and its accompanying prose description as a supplement to his ''Lectures on History and General Policy''. Priestley believed that the chart and ''A New Char ...
'', published in 1765. It presented dates simply and provided an analogue for the concept of historical progress that was becoming popular in the 18th century. However, as Priestley recognized, history is not totally linear. The table has the advantage in that it can present many of these intersections and branching paths. For Priestley, its main use was a "mechanical help to the knowledge of history", not as an image of history. Regardless, the timeline had become very popular during the eighteenth and 19th century.
Positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
emerged in the 19th century and the development of
chronophotography Chronophotography is a photographic technique from the Victorian era which captures a number of phases of movements. The best known chronophotography works were mostly intended for the scientific study of locomotion, to discover practical informa ...
and tree ring analysis made visible time taking place at various speeds. This encouraged people to think that events might be truly objectively recorded. However, in some cases, filling in a timeline with more data only pushed it towards impracticality. Jacques Barbeu-Duborg's 1753 ''Chronologie Universelle'' was mounted on a 54 feet long scroll.
Charles Joseph Minard Charles Joseph Minard (; ; 27 March 1781 – 24 October 1870) was a French civil engineer recognized for his significant contribution in the field of information graphics in civil engineering and statistics. Minard was, among other things, noted ...
's 1869
thematic map A thematic map is a type of map that portrays the geographic pattern of a particular subject matter (theme) in a geographic area. This usually involves the use of map symbols to visualize selected properties of geographic features that are not ...
of causalities of the French army in its Russian campaign put much less focus on the one-directional line.
Charles Renouvier Charles Bernard Renouvier (; January 1, 1815 – September 1, 1903) was a French philosopher. He considered himself a "Swedenborg of history" who sought to update the philosophy of Kantian liberalism and individualism for the socio-economic real ...
's 1876 ''Uchronie'', a branching map of the history of Europe, depicted both the actual course of history and
counterfactual Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactual ...
paths. At the end of the 19th century,
Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson
declared the metaphor of the timeline to be deceiving in ''
Time and Free Will ''Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness'' (French: ''Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience'') is Henri Bergson's doctoral thesis, first published in 1889. The essay deals with the problem of free will, w ...
''. The question of
big history Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. Big History resists specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approac ...
and
deep time Deep time is a term introduced and applied by John McPhee to the concept of geologic time in his book ''Basin and Range'' (1981), parts of which originally appeared in the ''New Yorker'' magazine. The philosophical concept of geological time w ...
engendered estranging forms of the timeline, like in
Olaf Stapledon William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction.Andy Sawyer, " illiamOlaf Stapledon (1886-1950)", in Bould, Mark, et al, eds. ''Fifty Key Figures ...
's 1930 work ''
Last and First Men ''Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future'' is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from t ...
'' where timelines are drawn on scales from the historical to the cosmological. Similar techniques are used by the
Long Now Foundation The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is an American non-profit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster ...
, and visual artists have presented the difficulties of chronological representation, like
Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
,
On Kawara was a Japanese conceptual artist who lived in New York City from 1965. He took part in many solo and group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976. Early life Kawara was born in Kariya, Japan on December 24, 1932. After graduating fro ...
, J. J. Grandville, and
Saul Steinberg Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914 – May 12, 1999) was a Romanian-American artist, best known for his work for ''The New Yorker'', most notably '' View of the World from 9th Avenue''. He described himself as "a writer who draws". Biography S ...
.


Types

There are different types of timelines: * Text timelines, labeled as text * Number timelines, the labels are numbers, commonly
line graph In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the line graph of an undirected graph is another graph that represents the adjacencies between edges of . is constructed in the following way: for each edge in , make a vertex in ; for every ...
s * Interactive, clickable, zoomable * Video timelines There are many methods to visualize timelines. Historically, timelines were static images and were generally drawn or printed on paper. Timelines relied heavily on
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
, and the ability of the artist to visualize the data.


Uses

Timelines are often used in education to help students and researchers with understanding the order or chronology of historical events and trends for a subject. To show time on a specific scale on an axis, a timeline can visualize time lapses between events, durations (such as lifetimes or wars), and the simultaneity or the overlap of spans and events.


In historical studies

Timelines are particularly useful for studying history, as they convey a sense of change over time. Wars and social movements are often shown as timelines. Timelines are also useful for
biographies A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...
. Examples include: *
Timeline of the civil rights movement This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included secu ...
*
Timeline of European exploration This timeline of European exploration lists major geographic discoveries and other firsts credited to or involving Europeans during the Age of Discovery and the following centuries, between the years AD 1418 and 1957. Despite several significan ...
*
Timeline of imperialism This Timeline of European imperialism covers episodes of imperialism by western nations since 1400; for other countries, see . Pre-1700 * 1402 Castillian invasion of Canary Islands. * 1415 Portuguese conquest of Ceuta. * 1420-1425 Portuguese set ...
*
Timeline of Solar System exploration This is a timeline of Solar System exploration ordered by date of spacecraft launch. It includes: *All spacecraft that have left Earth orbit for the purposes of Solar System exploration (or were launched with that intention but failed), includ ...
*
Timeline of United States history A timeline is a display of a list of events in Chronology, chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with calendar date, dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any ...
*
Timeline of World War I This is a list of the events of World War I in chronological order. 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 Post-1920 Notes See also * Diplomatic history of World War I References * * * * * * * * * * * * * Further reading * Ex ...
*
Timeline of religion Religion has been a factor of the human experience throughout history, from pre-historic to modern times. The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history. Written history (the age of formal writing) is only roughly 5,000 y ...


In natural sciences

Timelines are also used in the natural world and sciences, such as in
astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
,
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
, and
geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...
: * 2009 flu pandemic timeline *
Chronology of the universe The chronology of the universe describes the history and future of the universe according to Big Bang cosmology. Research published in 2015 estimates the earliest stages of the universe's existence as taking place 13.8 billion years ago, wit ...
*
Geologic time scale The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochrono ...
*
Timeline of evolutionary history of life The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, main ...


In project management

Another type of timeline is used for
project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. Th ...
. Timelines help team members know what
milestones A milestone is a marker of distance along roads. Milestone may also refer to: Measurements *Milestone (project management), metaphorically, markers of reaching an identifiable stage in any task or the project *Software release life cycle state, s ...
need to be achieved and under what time schedule. An example is establishing a project timeline in the implementation phase of the life cycle of a computer system.


Software

Timelines, no longer constrained by previous space and functional limitations, are now digital and interactive, generally created with computer software.
Microsoft Encarta ''Microsoft Encarta'' is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription, although later articles ...
encyclopedia provided one of the earliest multimedia timelines intended for students and the general public. Hyperhistory and
ChronoZoom ChronoZoom is a free open source project that visualizes time on the broadest possible scale from the Big Bang to the present day. Conceived by Walter Alvarez and Roland Saekow and developed by the department of Earth and Planetary Science at t ...
are other examples of interactive timeline software.


See also

*
Chronology Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. I ...
*
ChronoZoom ChronoZoom is a free open source project that visualizes time on the broadest possible scale from the Big Bang to the present day. Conceived by Walter Alvarez and Roland Saekow and developed by the department of Earth and Planetary Science at t ...
– an open source project for visualizing the timeline of Big History *
Detailed logarithmic timeline This timeline shows the whole history of the universe, the Earth, and mankind in one table. Each row is defined in ''years ago'', that is, years before the present date, with the earliest times at the top of the chart. In each table cell on the r ...
*
List of timelines This is a list of timelines currently on Wikipedia. Overview There are several types of timeline articles. *''Historical timelines'' show the significant historical events and developments for a specific topic, over the course of centuries or ...
*
Living graph In terms of knowledge representation, a living graph (also referred to as a "lifeline", "living timeline" or "fortune line".) is a graph similar to a chronology Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time ...
*
Logarithmic timeline A logarithmic timeline is a timeline laid out according to a logarithmic scale. This necessarily implies a zero point and an infinity point, neither of which can be displayed. The most natural zero point is the Big Bang, looking forward, but ...
*
Many-worlds interpretation The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum me ...
*
Sequence of events Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
*
Synchronoptic view A synchronoptic view is a graphic display of a number of entities as they proceed through time. A synchronoptic view can be used for many purposes but is best suited to the visual display of history. A number of related timelines can be drawn on ...
*
Timecode A timecode (alternatively, time code) is a sequence of numeric codes generated at regular intervals by a timing synchronization system. Timecode is used in video production, show control and other applications which require temporal coordinatio ...
*
Timestream The timestream or time stream is a metaphorical conception of time as a stream, a flowing body of water. In '' Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction'', the term is more narrowly defined as: "the series of all events from past t ...
*
Timelines of world history The following is a list of timeline articles: Prehistory *For events dating from the formation of the universe see: Timeline of the early universe and Timeline of the universe *For events dating from the formation of the planet to the rise of m ...


References


External links


Open Source Software - Freeware


Free Timeline Maker
free-timeline.com
ChronoFrise

histomania

Timeline JS
Open-Source-Software, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA


Educational Timelines

* * {{Portal bar, History Infographics Statistical charts and diagrams Chronology Visualization (graphics)