Project 5: Creating a 3 Dimensional Timeline

Timeline Background

Timelines have long been used to represent temporal information in visual form. Here are some examples of timelines.

This timeline provides a overview of the history of classical music, the period of late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century (1870-1925) and shows composers of that period.

http://csdl.tamu.edu/~vijayk/Timelines/t9.html This timeline came from Vijay Kumar, a Ph.D. student in the Dept. of Computer Science at Texas A&M University.

This timeline is a clickable image map for famous mathematicians and represents the time period from 1600 to 1940. Clicking on the year sends the user to another page with relevant information. This is a departure from a linear format.

This timeline came from The History of Mathematics Page, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Clark University.

This timeline is designed in a normal format. Clicking on the year enclosed in brackets takes the user to relevant internet history for that decade as shown in the second picture. This timeline is from Hobbes' Internet Timeline v2.5

Here's an interesting timeline...from a company called Visual Evidence. Here's what they say about their service: "Utilizing a laptop within a courtroom can be very efficient in time-line situations where many documents which were created over a long period of time need to be referred to. You can effectively walk a jury through a period of time with just a click of the mouse. The Visual Evidence Company will scan the documents, code them, insert them into the time-line and design icons for you to pull up at your will."

http://www.vevidence.com/

Here's an example of a timeline produced with a commercial software program called Timeliner by Tom Snyder Productions. Students at Squaw Peak School in Phoenix, Arizona created timelines for their autobiographies showing important events in their lives. They added black and white photos using a QuickTake digital camera to personalize each timeline.  Timeliner: http://www.tomsnyder.com/products/productdetail.asp?PS=TIMTIM Tom Snyder Productions: http://www.tomsnyder.com

AT&T had an interesting timeline on the Web - 70 Years of AT&T Innovation: 1925-1995. The interface consisted of eight pictures, each representing a decade. Clicking on a picture takes the viewer to a Web site for that time period in AT&T's history.

AT&T has a new timeline up this year - AT&T Sound Science. http://www.nobell.org/~gjm/att/rock/timeline/

This is another concept of a timeline showing the progression and development of events as well as the event itself. The acronyms on the side of the timeline are explained in a legend underneath the graphic. This timeline shows the Aircraft and Rocket Projects at the Marshall Space Flight Center/Space Sciences Laboratory.

http://wwwssl.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/project/fltproj.HTM

This is an Internet timeline that appeared in the October, 1996, issue of Internet World. It shows the evolution of Internet bandwidth from 1969 to 1996. Although this is a linear timeline, three dimensional objects are included such as the person, Tim Berners-Lee. Notice the pipe appears to be three-dimensional as well.

This is a computer history timeline also created with Timeliner by Tom Snyder Productions. Although the events are shown in chronological order, there is no indication of relative importance or the type of information. If this illustration were on the Web, hypertext links could be created to access more information about the timeline facts.

The common element in all of these timelines is the fact that they are representing information in basically two dimensions. There is no element of depth. Depth could be used to show the relative importance of information and also provide visual clues about that piece of information.