Timeline

For example, this meaning is used in the titles of many Wikipedia articles starting "Timeline of ..." Time and space (particularly the line) are intertwined concepts in human thought.

[3] The idea of orderly, segmented time is also represented in almanacs, calendars, charts, graphs, genealogical and evolutionary trees, where the line is central.

The table is easy to produce, append, and read with indices, so it also fit the Renaissance 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.

[7] By the 17th 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.

[citation needed] 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.

[8] Developments in printing and engraving that made practical larger and more detailed book illustrations allowed these changes, but in the 17th century, the table with some modifications continued to dominate.

Positivism emerged in the 19th century and the development of chronophotography and tree ring analysis made visible time taking place at various speeds.

Charles Joseph Minard's 1869 thematic map of casualties of the French army in its Russian campaign put much less focus on the one-directional line.

Similar techniques are used by the Long Now Foundation, and the difficulties of chronological representation have been presented by visual artists including Francis Picabia, On Kawara, J. J. Grandville, and Saul Steinberg.

Timelines (no longer constrained by previous space and functional limitations) are now digital and interactive, generally created with computer software.