The timeline

Timelines are so ubiquitous, we take for granted how they work, and we assume they have always been around. Clearly, there is a need for a historical perspective, as well as a present-day assessment of how timelines can best be used. Paradoxically, timelines seem to be used less the higher up the education ladder you go. At university level, they are used but not given much credit; it’s as if they over-simplify things. It was wonderful to discover there is a book on the history of the timeline (Cartographies of Time: a History of the Timeline, by Rosenberg and Grafton, 2010); I’ll review that book separately. In the meantime, let’s begin with basics.  

What is a timeline?

A timeline is a visual representation of things with dates, usually ordered sequentially. The things may be dates of people, of works, of civilisations, reigns, dynasties, or many other things. Some people argue that a timeline must have comparisons; otherwise it is a just a list. In my view, even the simplest list can provides some meaning.

Why do we create timelines?

Timelines are grasped in a different way to reading normal running text. They can be comprehended more as a whole, enabling comparisons to be made. For example, by showing Chinese dynasties alongside each other, it is immediately apparent that one or two Chinese dynasties, notably the Ming and the Qing Dynasties, lasted much longer than most others. Even the most simple tabular display reveals some meaning.

This was my first attempt at showing Chinese dynasties, but of course, if the dates were displayed to represent the time period involved, it would be clear at a glance which ones were longest. I asked Copilot to draw it, and the result was correct, but visually very poor:

Why have timelines?

Without getting too much into the philosophy of history, one way to make sense of a vast period of time, such as Chinese history, is to try to subdivide it into chunks which, even if not entirely tidy, make it easier to describe and to compare. There may be no clear underlying patterns to world history (as H A L Fisher stated, “men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in History a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me”. But if all we have in history is a mass of events, we will never be able to make any sense of it. The creation of a timeline for a chronological sequence is a start towards meaning.

What can timelines show?

We saw above that timelines can show a comparison between elements, but of course they can also show comparisons with elements outside the main timeline. Thus, for example, for example, given a date in a timeline of Cezanne’s life:

1870      Rejected by the Salon. Franco-Prussian War.

might look better as two columns:

The information is the same, but the difference is immediately noticeable. We are not comparing like with like. Cezanne’s rejection by the Salon was important for him, but not, perhaps, a major event in European history.

Timelines and designers

While timelines can achieve great things, they have a danger: an irresistible appeal for designers, who sometimes concentrate on the design at the expense of the message. I noticed this when reading Edward Tufte’s books. He calls them “analytical design”, but they have a lot in common with timelines.

Timeline software

The relationship between dates and durations is not something that spreadsheets display very well, as can be seen above. A better solution would be an automatic tool that could handle specific dates, circa-style dates, and even whole centuries (for example, “8th century BCE”). No doubt AI could do this – if given a good enough prompt, which I haven’t yet managed to do.

Next steps

After reading the Rosenberg and Grafton book, I plan to consider a few more examples of actual timelines, and to see if there is a more pedagogical basis that can be established for the timeline. And no, I don’t have a timeline for when that will be complete.