Timelines redux

Timelines have a central place in social studies classrooms. The simplicity of a timeline, drawing on notions of past, present and future, is powerful and communicative. Surprisingly, historians say that the first historical timeline was produced in 1757. The 1753 "Carte chronologique" created by Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg (1709-1779 is consider the first modern timeline. Barbeu-Dubourg's timeline was actually a mechanical device that consisted of a continuous 54 foot long scroll wound inside a container that open to reveal a segement of the timeline.



Stephen Ferguson, in his 1991 article "The 1753 carte chronographique
of Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg" tells the story of Barbeu-Dubourg's development of his carte chronographique work that even drew the attention of Denis Diderot in the third volume of Encyclopédie. An online version of Diderot's entry, in French, is available here. My translation of the entry begins,

Chronological (machine.) chronology, imagine an assemblage of several large cards rolled in a map. The height of this large map is hardly the height of a pie, but its length is very-considerable. This rolled map is divided into small equal parts with pages alternately scored in white & black so as to mark out the degrees on a large circle of a sphere. There are as many of these parts, as there are years that have elapsed years since the creation of the world. Each of these parts marks a year in the history of the world. A chronological scale is composed of three major eras; the first includes time since the creation of the world and until the foundation of Rome; the second, since the foundation of Rome and until the birth of Jesus Christ; the third, since the birth of Jesus Christ until our days.


References
Ferguson, S. (1991). The 1753 Carte chronographique of Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. Princeton University Library Chronicle. (Winter). Retrieved January 21, 2009 from., http://www.princeton.edu/~ferguson/PULC_1991_duBourg.pdf