chronology

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Dictionary: chro·nol·o·gy (krə-nŏl'ə-jē) pronunciation

n., pl. -gies.

The science that deals with the determination of dates and the sequence of events.
The arrangement of events in time.
A chronological list or table.

chronologist chro·nol'o·gist or chro·nol'o·ger n.

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Dental Dictionary: chronology

The arrangement of events in a time sequence, usually from the beginning to the end of an event.

Photography Encyclopedia: Chronology

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Chronology The following general chronology is provided for reference. The history of photography has been traced thematically in many of the longer entries. But this ‘backbone’ of dates offers a general overview of key technical, institutional, and artistic events in a wide range of countries. Usually, for each year cited, technical innovations appear first, followed by institutional events, and with publications (italicized) and significant photographs (italicized and bold) last.

Listing dates is not always a straightforward matter, especially in the case of new processes or items of equipment. In some cases—the year 1839 is an extreme example—similar discoveries were claimed by several people in different places. Preparing the list sometimes revealed inconsistencies between entries in the book, which were difficult to resolve. But we have done our best, using a wide range of sources. The most useful included Gail Buckland, Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography (1980); Farbe im Foto: Die Geschichte der Farbphotographie von 1861 bis 1981 (1981); Willfried Baatz, Geschichte der Fotografie (1997); Quentin Bajac, L'Image révéleé: l'invention de la photographie (2001; Eng. The Invention of Photography, 2002); A. W. Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography (2003); and, much the most detailed and wide ranging, Christian Sixou, Les Grandes Dates de la photographie (2000). There is an admirably clear and well-illustrated short chapter on the history of photographic processes in Brian Coe (ed.), Techniques of the World's Great Photographers (1981).

1558	Giovanni Battista della Porta's Magiae Naturalis includes a description of a camera obscura
1725	The German chemist Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers that light can darken a solution of chalk moistened with silver nitrate
1777	The Swedish chemist Carl Vilhelm Scheele compares the darkening effect on silver compounds of the different colours of the spectrum
1801	The English doctor Thomas Young elucidates the principles of human colour perception
1802	Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy contact-print silhouettes of leaves and other objects on paper and leather sensitized with silver nitrate, but cannot fix them
1816	The French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, working at his Burgundian estate near Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, embarks on photographic experimentation, using a variety of supports and light-sensitive materials. His objective is to create multiple reproductions of engravings and of images formed in the camera obscura
1822	Niépce makes a permanent copy of an engraving contact printed onto a glass plate sensitized with bitumen of Judaea, a substance that hardens when exposed to light
1824	At about this time, Niépce succeeds in making camera obscura images from his study window (points de vue), using a direct-positive process involving bitumen-coated metal plates. He names the process ‘heliography’
	In Paris, the diorama proprietor Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre also begins photographic experiments
1826	Daguerre learns from the Paris optician Chevalier of Niépce's work and conducts an inconclusive correspondence with him
1827	Probably in this summer Niépce creates *View from the Study Window (Point de vue du Gras à Saint-Loup de Varennes)*. Niépce meets Daguerre in Paris while en route to visit his brother in London, where he fails to interest the scientific establishment in his heliographic process
1829	Niépce and Daguerre sign a formal partnership contract (14 December), prior to which Niépce writes a description of his process, Notice sur l'héliographie. Subsequently Niépce starts using silver iodide as a means of sensitizing silver-plated copper plates
1833	In rural Brazil, Hercules Florence succeeds in contact printing and fixing on paper drawings and script created on glass with a burin; he also uses the term photographie
	Following Niépce's premature death (5 July), and building on his work, Daguerre continues to experiment, from 1836 assisted by the architect Eugène Hubert. The priority is now the speed of the process and the clarity and permanence of the image, rather than its reproducibility
1834	In England, William Henry Fox Talbot begins photographic experiments (January) and eventually succeeds in making and partially fixing silhouetted cameraless negative images of botanical specimens on paper, a process he describes as ‘photogenic drawing’
1835	On 28 February Talbot first notes the possibility of making ‘positive’ from ‘negative’ images
	That summer Talbot creates photogenic negative images on his estate at Lacock, using small wooden cameras (‘mousetraps’). The earliest surviving example is the c.1-inch square *Lacock Oriel Window* (*Latticed Window*) (August). Most significantly for the future, however, he also makes positive prints from his original negatives
	Some time between c.1835 and 1837, Daguerre begins to use mercury vapour to develop the latent image and salt to fix the result: a unique, positive, and finely detailed picture which becomes known as the daguerreotype
1838	In the autumn, after unsuccessful attempts to fund his invention by public subscription, Daguerre approaches the physicist and parliamentarian François Arago with a view to obtaining government support
	Daguerre, *Boulevard du Temple Paris*, probably the first surviving photograph of a human being, a man having his shoes polished in the street
	Charles Wheatstone invents a reflecting stereoscope
1839	Arago and the physicist Jean Baptiste Biot announce Daguerre's discovery—but not its practical details—to the Academy of Science in Paris (7 January)
	The first public showing of Talbot's photogenic drawings takes place at the Royal Institution, London (25 January)
	Talbot reveals the working details of his process to the Royal Society, London (21 February)
	Talbot's friend Sir John Herschel reveals his own, rapidly devised photographic process to the Royal Society (14 March). Herschel also proposes the use of sodium thiosulphate (‘hypo’) as a means of fixing photographic images
	The French civil servant Hippolyte Bayard produces his first direct-positive images on paper (20 March)
	In Munich, Carl August von Steinheil and Franz von Kobell make circular paper negatives of local views, and describe their process to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (13 April)
	In June and July it is arranged that Daguerre should cede the rights to his invention to the French state in return for an annual pension of 6, 000 francs
	Arago reveals the details of Daguerre's process at a joint meeting of the Academies of Science and Fine Arts (19 August)
	Daguerre's manual Historique et description du procédé du daguerréotype et du diorama is published (21 August). A daguerreotype craze follows, with kits on sale from entrepreneurs like Chevalier, Lerebours, and Daguerre himself for c.300 francs
	The first public demonstration of the daguerreotype in London (11 September)
	In Barcelona, Ramón Alabern makes Spain's first daguerreotype (10 November)
	The details of Daguerre's process rapidly circulate throughout Europe and the eastern United States, and many translations of the Historique et description appear
1840	The Hungarian mathematician Josef Petzval designs a fast (f/3.6) ‘portrait’ lens that, in conjunction with chemical improvements by John Goddard, Franz Kratochwilla, and Antoine Claudet, greatly reduces daguerreotype exposure times; Hippolyte Fizeau introduces gold toning to improve the contrast of the final image and make it less fragile
	The American dentist Alexander S. Wolcott opens the world's first photographic (daguerreotype) portrait studio (Wolcott & Johnson) in New York (4 March)
	The first lunar daguerreotype is taken by the American chemistry professor John W. Draper
	Talbot discovers a method of speeding the formation and development of the latent (negative) image (September). It becomes easier to use the negative-positive process for living subjects, and Talbot creates a portrait of his wife Constance on 10 October. Talbot's improved process, patented in 1841, is called the calotype (or, by some, the Talbotype)
	The Abbé Louis Compte, visiting South America aboard a French vessel, makes daguerreotypes at Rio de Janeiro (January); the young Emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, buys a camera and subsequently becomes a patron of photography
	Hippolyte Bayard, *Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man* (*Le Noyé*)
	During the next decade, a variety of optical, chemical, and manipulative advances improve the efficacy of both Daguerre's and Talbot's processes, until both are superseded by the wet-plate process during the 1850s
1841	Richard Beard opens what is reputed to be Europe's first daguerreotype portrait studio, in Regent Street, London (March); Hermann Biow opens a studio in Hamburg
1842	Herschel invents the cyanotype printing process
	Appearance of the Illustrated London News (14 May)
	Biow photographs the aftermath of the catastrophic Hamburg fire (May)
	Mads Alstrup opens the first portrait studio in Copenhagen
1843	The Austrian Joseph Puchberger patents a panoramic camera capable of making 48.3 × 61 cm (19 × 24 in) daguerreotypes
	Robert Adamson opens a studio at Rock House, Calton Hill, Edinburgh (May), and goes into partnership with the painter David Octavius Hill; that year they begin making calotypes at the fishing village of Newhaven (until 1847)
	Founding of the Edinburgh Calotype Club
	Appearance of the Illustrirte Zeitung in Leipzig, Saxony
	Anna Atkins begins publication of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (October; it is completed a decade later)
	Sergei Levitsky makes daguerreotype views in the Caucasus
	The firm of Southworth & Hawes is founded in Boston
1844	Henry Talbot opens the Reading Establishment for commercial production of photographic prints and publications
	Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (6 parts, 1844-6)
	Talbot, *The Haystack*
1845	Talbot, Sun Pictures of Scotland
1847	C. F. A. Niépce de Saint-Victor introduces a practical method for making negatives on glass, using a coating of egg white (albumen) and potassium iodide
	Calotype Society founded in London
	L.D. Blanquart-Évrard announces significant improvements to Talbot's calotype process
	The African-American Glenalvin Goodridge founds a daguerreotype studio in York, Pennsylvania; by 1865, after an interval, his brothers Wallace and William have restarted the business in Saginaw, Michigan
1848	L'Illustration publishes wood engravings of revolutionary events in Paris from daguerreotypes by Thibault (July)
1849	Sir David Brewster perfects a lenticular stereoscope for viewing stereo daguerreotypes
	In the autumn Maxime Du Camp and Gustave Flaubert embark on a photographic expedition to the Middle East which lasts until the spring of 1851
1850	The Imperial Printing Office in Vienna opens a photographic department under Paul Pretsch which produces calotype architectural studies and views
	L.D. Blanquart-Évrard introduces albumen paper for printing positives from negatives
	The Daguerreian Journal (later Humphrey's Journal) is founded in New York
	J.T. Zealy makes daguerreotypes of South Carolina slaves (rediscovered in 1976)
1851	Gustave Le Gray's waxed negative technique further improves the calotype process, enabling sensitive materials to be prepared and stored before use
	Frederick Scott Archer publishes a description of the wet-collodion process in The Chemist (March). Although cumbersome and difficult to use, especially out of doors, this wet-plate process, especially in conjunction with albumenized paper, is capable of producing extremely fine images. It dominates photographic practice for over two decades
	The Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, London, includes over 700 entries from both sides of the Atlantic, including Jules Duboscq's stereo-daguerreotypes and John Whipple's daguerreotype of the moon, but also boosts the wet-plate process
	Société Héliographique founded in Paris (January)
	Appearance of La Lumière, edited by Ernest Lacan (9 February)
	The French Mission Héliographique, the first state-sponsored photographic survey of historical monuments, produces c.300 paper prints, made by Baldus, Bayard, Le Gray, Le Secq, and Mestral
	L.D. Blanquart-Évrard opens his Imprimerie Photographique at Loos-lès-Lille, and by the time the establishment closes in 1855 has produced the salt prints for several important archaeological and other works, including Du Camp's Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852), Greene's Le Nil (1854), and Salzmann's Jérusalem (1856)
1852	Henry Talbot begins experimenting with a photomechanical etching process (‘photoglyphic engraving’), later known as photogravure, which is eventually brought to fruition by Karl Klič in 1879
	George Washington Wilson establishes his firm in Aberdeen, Scotland
1853	Adolphe Martin invents a rapid direct-positive process later known as the tintype, which becomes particular popular with itinerant photographers
	The Photographic Society of London is founded (20 January; it becomes the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (RPS) in 1894)
	Félix Teynard, Égypte et Nubie (part-work completed in 1858)
1854	Achille Quinet patents the first ‘binocular’ (twin-lens) stereoscopic camera, the Quinetoscope
	First description of a solar camera, using reflected sunlight to make enlargements from negatives (ordinary contact printing created images the same size as the original negative)
	Société Française de Photographie (SFP) founded in Paris
	London Stereoscopic Company founded
	The Liverpool Journal of Photography is launched, becoming in 1860 the British Journal of Photography
	André Disdéri patents the carte de visite format (November)
	The firm of Fratelli Alinari is founded in Florence
	Nadar, *The Mime Charles Debureau as Pierrot* (1854-5)
	US Acting Master's Mate Eliphalet Brown Jr., *Portrait of Tanaka Mitsuyoshi* and other daguerreotypes of people and scenes in Yokohama and elsewhere (the Mitsuyoshi portrait is rediscovered in 1983); other Japanese scenes are photographed by a Russian naval officer, Alexander Fyodorovich Mozhaisky
1855	Roger Fenton takes c.360 wet-plate photographs of views and military scenes in the Crimea (March-June)
	Édouard-Denis Baldus creates an album of photographs of the railway between Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer
	Gustave Le Gray opens a lavish studio on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris
	The Exposition Universelle in Paris includes a large photographic exhibition organized by the SFP
	A photographic school is established at Elphinstone College, Bombay
	John Mayall, *Sergeant Dawson and his Daughter*
1856	William Thompson makes primitive underwater photographs in the Wey estuary, southern England
	Photographic instruction is included in the training of the British Royal Engineers
	Countess Castiglione begins her photographic association with Pierre-Louis Pierson of the Paris studio Mayer & Pierson
	Gustave Le Gray, *The Brig*
1857	Felice Beato photographs Lucknow after its recapture from rebels by the British
	Carlo Naya opens a studio in Venice
	The Bonfils photographic company is founded in Beirut
	Camille Silvy, *La Vallée de l'Huisne (River Scene, France)*
	Oscar Gustav Rejlander, *The Two Ways of Life*
	Robert Howlett, *Isambard Kingdom Brunel before the Launch of the Leviathan [Great Eastern]* (November)
	Shiro Ichiki, *Portrait of Nariakira Shimazu*, the oldest surviving daguerreotype by a Japanese (rediscovered in 1975)
1858	The South Kensington Museum, London (later the Victoria & Albert Museum) holds an international photography exhibition jointly organized by the Photographic Society and the SEP
	Nadar makes wet-plate aerial photographs from a balloon
	Warren de la Rue makes stereographs of the moon
	The American Society of Photographers is founded
	Désiré Charnay makes the first of several visits to the Yucatán, Mexico, where he photographs pre-Columbian ruins
	Founding of the Odessa Photographic Society and the Russian journal Svetopis (Light-Painting)
	Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described by Francis Frith
	Henry Peach Robinson, *Fading Away*
1859	Camille Silvy opens a successful carte de visite studio in Bayswater, London
	Charles Leander Weed takes the first photographs of the Yosemite Valley (June)
1860	Permission for the sale of royal photographic portraits in Britain gives a major impetus to celebrity photography
	Personal and financial difficulties force Le Gray to leave France; later he photographs Palermo shortly after its capture by Garibaldi (June)
	Disdéri launches his subscription celebrity series Galérie des contemporains
1861	The English photographer Thomas Sutton invents and patents (August) a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, but few are actually made
	The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell makes the first (projected) colour photograph, using three colour separations, but the photographic establishment takes little notice
	Auguste Rosalie Bisson takes wet-plate views from the summit of Mont Blanc (24 July)
	Nadar uses battery-powered lights to photograph the Paris catacombs (December)
	A photographic department is founded by the Krupp steelworks, Essen
1862	The British Fine Art Copyright Act extends copyright protection to photographs registered at Stationers' Hall, London (it remains in force until 1912)
	Hikoma Ueno opens the first Japanese-owned studio, in Nagasaki
	Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne, Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine
1863	The studio of Howard, Bourne & Shepherd (from 1865, Bourne & Shepherd) is established in Simla, north-western India; Samuel Bourne makes the first of three photographic expeditions into the Himalayas
	Felice Beato arrives in Japan, and opens a studio in Yokohama
1864	John Wilson Swan introduces important improvements to the carbon process, described by Adolphe Louis Poitevin in 1855; the resulting prints are both subtle and permanent, and become widely used in commercial photography
	The journal Photographische Mitteilungen is founded by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel
	Central Europe's first exhibition devoted exclusively to photography is organized in Vienna by the Photographische Gesellschaft (f. 1861)
1865	Charles Piazzi Smyth uses magnesium combustion to photograph inside the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt
	Foundation of the Palestine Exploration Fund
	William Mervyn Lawrence opens a portrait and view business in Dublin; a British intelligence officer, Samuel Lee Anderson, based in Dublin Castle, creates an album of Irish nationalists, inscribed Members of the Fenian Brotherhood
	The Uruguayan Esteban Garcia photographs the war between Paraguay and Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay (1865-70) for an American company
	Alexander Gardner, *Execution of the Lincoln Conspirators at Washington Arsenal* (7 July)
1866	W. B. Woodbury patents the photomechanical Woodburytype process
	The Rapid Rectilinear distortion-free lens is introduced independently by J. H. Dallmeyer and H. A. Steinheil
	Ernst Abbe of Zeiss collaborates with the Schott glass company to develop new glasses suitable for the manufacture of more advanced lenses
	Introduction of the cabinet format studio photograph
	Émile Gsell photographs of the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia
	George Barnard, Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign
1867	Commencement of the first of four US Geological and Geographical Surveys of the Western Territories, a programme lasting until 1879 and producing thousands of photographs of the American West
	Julia Margaret Cameron, *Sir John Herschel* (April)
1868	An eight-volume official work, The People of India, begins to appear, and is completed in 1875
1869	The ‘joining of the rails’ at Promontory Point, Utah, is recorded by A. J. Russell, Alfred Hart, and Charles R. Savage (10 May)
	Launch of the specialist Revue photographique des hôpitaux de Paris, illustrated with tipped-in, hand-coloured photographs (it lasts until 1876)
1870	During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1), microphotography is used to create micro-documents transportable by pigeon to and from besieged French cities
	Eugène Appert's Crimes of the Commune use photomontage to fake images of atrocities committed by the Paris Communards
	Foundation of the Archaeological Survey of India, which in 1871 acquires a photographic branch
	Launch in Yokohama of the journal Far East (30 May), regularly illustrated with albumen prints
	Andrei Karelin, Nizhni Novgorod
1871	Richard Leach Maddox describes a prototype gelatin dry plate; improved versions are increasingly used in the course of the decade, and eventually revolutionize photographic practice. In particular, dry emulsions make the creation of roll-film possible, and standardized manufacturing procedures encourage the development of practical sensitometry
	William Henry Jackson photographs in Yellowstone
1872	Tomishige Studio founded by Rihei Tomishige in Kumamoto City, Kyushu, Japan
	Henry Taunt, A New Map of the River Thames
	Charles Darwin, On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, partly illustrated with photographs by Oscar Rejlander
1873	William Willis introduces the platinum print (platinotype)
	Timothy H. O'Sullivan, *Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelly, New Mexico*
1877	John Thomson, Street Life in London (12 parts completed in 1878)
1878	Eadweard Muybridge devises a battery-of-cameras system to capture photographs of horses in motion
1879	Photogravure, a photomechanical process for creating high-quality reproductions, is perfected by Karl Klič
1880	The New York Daily Graphic uses the half-tone process to print a small-scale reproduction of a photograph of Manhattan's Shantytown (4 March)
	The Underwood & Underwood stereographic company is founded in Ottowa, Kansas (it moves to New York in 1891)
1881	George Eastman founds the Eastman Dry Plate Company at Rochester, NY, with six employees
1884	Photomechanical reproductions of photographs of military manoeuvres by Ottomar Anschütz appear in the Leipzig Illustrirte Zeitung (15 March)
	Launch of Amateur Photographer magazine (10 October)
	Lala Deen Dayal becomes court photographer to the Nizam of Hyderabad
	The first edition of Josef Maria Eder's multi-volume Ausführliches Handbuch der Fotografie (Comprehensive Handbook of Photography) begins to appear
1885	Launch of the Eastman-Walker roll holder, taking a 24-exposure paper film and suitable for attachment to standard plate cameras
	Gaston Tissandier, La Photographie en ballon
1886	John Thomson is appointed ‘Official Instructor of Photography’ at the Royal Geographical Society, London
	Nadar's interview of the centenarian chemist Michel Chevreul is photographed by Paul Nadar, and thirteen of the pictures are photomechanically reproduced in Le Journal illustré (5 September)
	An international photography exhibition is held in Oporto, Portugal
	Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, *Water Rats*
	Josef Maria Eder, Die Moment-Photographie (Instantaneous Photography)
1887	Patenting of the Kinetoscope motion-picture viewer
	Peter Henry Emerson, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads
	Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion
1888	Launch of the Kodak roll-film box camera (June), with the marketing slogan ‘you press the button, we do the rest’
	As a by-product of their pioneering research on sensitometry, Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Driffield patent an exposure calculator (14 April), later marketed as the Actinograph
	Founding of the Photo-Club de Paris
	Appearance of National Geographic Magazine (October)
1889	Opening of the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Art Institute) in Vienna, providing important facilities for photographic training
	P. H. Emerson, Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art
1890	Paul Rudolph of Zeiss designs the Protar, the first anastigmat lens
	Inauguration of the Berlin Lette-Verein's photography school for women
	Berliner illustrirte Zeitung founded
	Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
	Alphonse Bertillon, La Photographie judiciaire
1892	Foundation of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring (April)
	Foundation of the Keystone View Company in Meadville, Pa., by Benjamin L. Singley
1893	Verascope stereoscopic camera launched by Jules Richard, Paris
1894	Invention of the Mutoscope, a device using series of still photographs to create the illusion of movement
	Creation of the Japanese Army Photographic Unit
	Alfred Lichtwark, Die Bedeutung der Amateur-Photographie (The Significance of Amateur Photography)
1895	The German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen takes the first X-ray photographs (November-December)
	The pictorialist Society for the Encouragement of Amateur Photography is founded in Hamburg
	George Ewing, A Handbook of Photography for Amateurs in India
1896	Paul Martin receives the RPS's Gold Medal for his series of night photographs London by Gaslight
1897	Foundation of the National Photographic Record Association by Sir Benjamin Stone and others, active until 1910
	Richard and Cherry Kearton, With Nature and a Camera
1898	The Folmer & Schwing Manufacturing Co. launches the Graflex camera, the first of a long line of best-selling SLR cameras
	Secondo Pia takes controversial photographs of the Turin Shroud
	Clarence H. White, *Girl with a Mirror*
1899	Louis Boutan makes an artificially lit underwater photograph 50 m (164 ft) down in the open Mediterranean
1900	Eastman Kodak launches the Brownie camera
	By this time, c.30 per cent of British amateurs are women, and more than 3, 500 female professionals are working in the USA
	George R. Lawrence of Chicago uses a purpose-built Mammoth camera to photograph an entire train
	The Munich Photo School is founded, a joint venture between the city, the Bavarian state, and the South German Photographers' Association
	Louis Boutan, La Photographie sous-marine et les progrès de la photographie
1901	The Professional Photographers' Association is founded, and later (1983) becomes the British Institute of Professional Photographers
	Charles Caffin, Photography as a Fine Art
1902	Paul Rudolph designs the Tessar lens
	Alfred Stieglitz founds the Photo-Secession in New York
1903	Stieglitz launches the journal Camera Work
	Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, La Photographie judiciaire
	Frederick Evans, *A Sea of Steps (Wells Cathedral)*
1904	The German physicist Arthur Korn transmits photographic images over telephone lines from Munich to Nuremberg
	The autochrome colour process is announced by the Lumière brothers of Lyon, France
	Edward S. Curtis, *The Vanishing Race—Navaho*
1905	The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession—later known as Gallery 291—open at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York, and continue until 1917
	Sir Benjamin Stone's Pictures: Records of National Life and History (2 vols., 1905-6)
1906	Marketing of the first commercial panchromatic plates, sensitive to all the colours of the spectrum
1907	The autochrome process is introduced commercially, becomes popular with amateurs, and remains available for c.30 years
	The first volume of Edward S. Curtis's twenty-volume The North American Indian appears (the last volume is published in 1930)
	Alfred Stieglitz, *The Steerage*
1908	Karl Karlovich Bulla and his son Victor photograph Leo Tolstoy and his family at Yasnaya Polyana on the occasion of the writer's 80th birthday (July)
1909	Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii embarks on an official photographic survey of Russia, using his own three-colour system
1910	Herbert Ponting makes still and motion pictures of Scott's ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic (1910-12)
	International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Museum, Buffalo, NY
	The ‘Kodak Girl’ becomes a central feature of Kodak advertising
1911	International Salon of Artistic Photography in Kiev
1912	Jacques-Henri Lartigue, *Grand Prix of the Automobile Club de France*
1913	Alvin Langdon Coburn, New York from its Pinnacles
	Anton Giulio and Arturo Bragaglia, Fotodinamismo futurista
	Paul Strand, *Abstraction, Shadows of a Veranda, Connecticut*
1914	The Australian Frank Hurley joins Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica and takes spectacular photographs in extreme conditions
1915	British troops attacking at Neuve Chapelle on the Western Front use maps based entirely on aerial reconnaissance; in general, the First World War produces major advances in aerial photography
	Wilhelm Weimar, Die Daguerreotypie in Hamburg, 1839-1860
1916	Arnold Genthe, The Book of the Dance
1917	Alvin Langdon Coburn's Vortographs exhibited at the London Camera Club (February)
	The final, double issue (49/50) of Camera Work appears, with modern work by Paul Strand (June)
	Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths take their first ‘fairy’ photographs at Cottingley, Yorkshire (July)
	Foundation of the Imperial War Museum, London
	Victor Bulla records the revolutionary events in Petrograd (St Petersburg) (February-October)
1919	The Photographic Bureau of the British Ministry of Information becomes the Imperial War Museum's Department of Photographs (1 January)
1922	Arthur Korn transmits photographs by radio
	Edward Weston, *Armco Steel*
1923	Edward Steichen becomes chief photographer for Nast Publications, publishers of Vogue
	Alfred Stieglitz embarks on a long series of cloud studies that he describes as Equivalents
	Edward Weston travels to Mexico with Tina Modotti
1924	L'Illustration (26 January) publishes a three-dimensional anaglyph of the moon produced by Léon Gimpel from two earlier (1902, 1904) astronomical photographs
	László Moholy-Nagy, Malerei Fotografie Film (Painting Photography Film)
	Man Ray, *Kiki: le violon d'Ingres*
1925	Launch of Leitz's Leica I (a) 35 mm camera
	Arbeiter illustrierte Zeitung founded
1926	The German Ica, Goerz, Ernemann, and Contessa-Nettel companies merge to create the Zeiss Ikon photographic conglomerate
	Meeting of Eugène Atget and Margaret Bourke-White, who acquires many of his negatives after his death the following year; later she sells them to MoMA, New York
	Japanese magazine Asahi Camera launched
	Rudolf Koppitz, *Movement Study*
1927	Germaine Krull, Metall
1928	Franke & Heidecke introduce the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex
	Dephot agency founded in Berlin
	Appearance of the French illustrated weekly Vu (21 March)
	Salon de l'Escalier exhibition of modern photography in Paris (May-June)
	Karl Blossfeldt, Urformen der Kunst (Archetypes of Art)
	Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist Schön (The World is Beautiful)
	August Sander, *Pastry-Cook, Cologne*
1929	Alfred Stieglitz opens the gallery An American Place in New York, which lasts until 1946
	Walter Peterhans is appointed to teach photography at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany
	Film and Foto (Fifo) exhibition in Stuttgart
	An exhibition of Hill and Adamson calotypes is held at the Belvedere, Vienna, curated by Heinrich Schwarz
	August Sander, Antlitz der Zeit (Face of our Time)
	Tina Modotti, *Woman of Tehuantapec* (c.1929)
1930	Lewis Hine is commissioned to document the construction of the Empire State Building, New York, eventually creating hundreds of images, a selection of which are published in Men at Work (1932)
	Atget: photographe de Paris, introduced by Pierre Mac Orlan
	At about this time, Man Ray creates his celebrated *Glass Tears*
1931	The Soviet photo-essay A Day in the Life of a Moscow Worker (Alpert, Shaikhet, Tules) appears in the Arbeiter illustrierte Zeitung
	Julien Levy opens his first gallery, at 602 Madison Avenue, New York, with a retrospective exibition of American photography
1932	Launch of Zeiss Ikon's Contax I 35 mm camera
	Group f/64 exhibition at the M. H. de Young Museum, San Francisco (November-December)
	Edward Weston, The Art of Edward Weston
	Launch of Japanese journal Koga (Light Picture)
	Henri Cartier-Bresson, *Place de l'Europe*
	Wanda Wulz, *I+Cat*
1933	Founding of the Rapho agency in Paris
	A team led by Col. L. V. S. Blacker overflies Mount Everest for the first time and takes photographs (3 April)
	Brassaï: Paris de nuit: 60 photos inédites
	José Ortiz-Echagüe inaugurates a three-part series (completed in 1943) of photographic studies of Spain with España: tipos y trajes (Spain: People and Costumes)
1934	Founding of Alliance Photo in Paris, and opening of the Harcourt Studio
	Edward Weston begins a relationship with Charis Wilson (April), who inspires a series of celebrated nudes in the mid- and late 1930s
	Alexey Brodovitch becomes art director of Harper's Bazaar
	Doctrine of Socialist Realism proclaimed in the USSR
	Antoine Poidebard, La Trace de Rome dans le désert de Syrie, based on aerial photographs
	Alexander Rodchenko, *Girl with a Leica*
1935	Launch of the AP WirePhoto network (1 January)
	Kodachrome colour transparency film is introduced for cinematographic use (in 1936 for still cameras)
	Roy Stryker creates and heads the Historical Section of the US Resettlement Administration (in 1937 renamed the Farm Security Administration [FSA])
	Madame Yevonde, *Lady Milbanke as ‘Queen of the Amazons’*
1936	Launch of Ihagee Kamerawerk's 35 mm Kine Exakta SLR, and of Agfacolor transparency film
	T* lens coating patented by Zeiss
	In Japan, the Seiki Optical Co. designs a Leica-type 35 mm camera called the Kwannon (marketed in Europe from 1937 as the Hansa Canon)
	Walter Benjamin's essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’
	Appearance of Life magazine (23 November)
	Founding of the Black Star agency in New York
	The Photo League, a group of New York-based documentary still photographers, emerges from the earlier (1928) Film and Photo League
	Bill Brandt, The English at Home
	Bill Brandt, *The Lambeth Walk*
	Dorothea Lange, *Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (Prairie Mother)* (March)
	Robert Capa, *The Falling Soldier (Death in Spain)* (23 September)
1937	Founding of Mass-Observation in England by Tom Harrison, Humphrey Jennings, and Charles Madge
	Edwin Land founds the Polaroid Corporation
	The Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, NJ (6 May), is recorded by numerous photographers; many of the pictures are distributed by WirePhoto and published next day
	Photography 1839-1937 exhibition at MoMA, New York, curated by Beaumont Newhall, and the first survey of photography to be held at an American museum. It is accompanied by Newhall's The History of Photography
	Edward Weston receives the first fellowship awarded to a photographer by the Guggenheim Foundation, for travel in the western states of the USA
	Maurice Bonnet founds the Relièphographie company in Paris for production of lenticular stereograms
	Man Ray, Max Ernst, Lee Miller, and other Surrealists gather at Lambe Creek near Truro, Cornwall (June)
	Herbert List, *Goldfish Bowl, Santorini*
1938	Kodak Super Six-20 camera with automatic exposure control, styled by Walter Dorwin Teague
	The Minox sub-miniature camera goes into production in Riga
	Andor Kraszna-Krausz founds the Focal Press in London
	Appearance of the British weekly illustrated paper Picture Post (1 October), edited by Stefan Lorant
	D. A. Spencer, Colour Photography in Practice
	R. M. Taft, Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889
	Henri Cartier-Bresson, *Sunday on the Banks of the Marne*
1939	Horst P. Horst, *Mainbocher Corset, Paris*
1940	Foundation of the Department of Photography at MoMA, New York, the first of its kind in an art museum, directed by Beaumont Newhall
	Edward Weston, *Tide Pool, Point Lobos*
1941	Victor Hasselblad founds his own manufacturing company in Gothenburg, Sweden
	The German serviceman Joe Heydecker takes illicit photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto (February)
	Launch of the Zurich monthly magazine Du (March)
	John Grierson founds the National Film Board in Canada
	The Wandering Jew exhibition held by Tanpei Shashin Club, Osaka, Japan (May)
	Walker Evans (with James Agee), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
	Ansel Adams, *Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico*
1942	Introduction of the Kodacolor process for making colour prints from colour negatives
	Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis
	Jindrich Styrsky (with Jindrich Heisler), On the needles of these days
	Launch of the Japanese propaganda magazine Front in sixteen languages (January), its first edition dedicated to the Japanese navy
	Gordon Parks, *Ella Watson (American Gothic)*
1943	George Strock, *Three American Soldiers Ambushed on Buna Beach, New Guinea* (February; published in Life, 20 September)
	Weegee, *The Critic*
1944	Robert Capa photographs the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, but most of the pictures are ruined in processing (6 June)
1945	Atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, N. Mex.; the only surviving colour photograph of the explosion is taken by Jack Aeby of the Special Engineer Detachment (16 July)
	The atomic attack on Hiroshima is photographed from the bomber Enola Gay by George R. Caron, and on the ground by Yoshito Matsushige (6 August)
	Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet
	Weegee, Naked City
	Joe Rosenthal, *Raising of the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima* (23 February)
1946	Refounding of Rapho by Raymond Grosset
1947	Edwin Land's ‘peel-apart’ instant picture process is demonstrated at the American Optical Society (21 February), heralding the launch of Polaroid 95 instant cameras the following year
	Magnum agency founded at meetings in Paris and New York
	Edward Steichen succeeds Beaumont Newhall as director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, New York, and stays until 1962
	Incorporation of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (Indiana University, Bloomington), which eventually acquires a large photographic archive
	Hugo van Wadenoyen, Wayside Snapshots
1948	Holography described and named by Denis Gabor
	W. Eugene Smith's photo-essay Country Doctor appears in Life
	Philippe Halsmann, *Dali Atomicus*
	Eric Hosking, *Barn Owl with Vole*
1949	Opening of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
	German fotoform group founded
	Launch of Paris Match (25 March)
	Robert Doisneau (with Blaise Cendrars), La Banlieue de Paris
	Willy Ronis, *Provençal Nude*
1950	First Photokina photographic trade fair, Cologne
	Drum magazine founded in South Africa, lasting until 1985
	Japan Professional Photographers' Society founded
	Izis (Israëlis Bidermanas), Paris des rêves
	Robert Doisneau, *The Kiss at the Hôtel de Ville (Les Amants de l'Hôtel de Ville)* (March)
1951	Partly as the result of official harassment, the Photo League disbands
	Light Publicity, one of the most important post-war Japanese advertising agencies, is created, and employs many leading photographers
	The Photographic Society of Japan is founded (December)
	David Douglas Duncan, This Is War
1952	Helmut and Alison Gernsheim rediscover Niépce's *View from the Study Window (Point de vue du Gras à Saint-Loup de Varennes)* of 1827 (15 February)
	Launch of the journal Aperture
	Henri Cartier-Bresson, Images à la sauvette, photographies (Paris)/The Decisive Moment: Photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson (New York)
1953	Launch of Playboy magazine (November)
	Dmitri Baltermants, *The Announcement of Stalin's Death*
1954	Ernst Leitz GmbH launches the Leica M series with the M3 rangefinder camera
	Pierre Bourdin begins working for French Vogue
	Pierre Verger, Deux Afriques
1955	The Family of Man exhibition opens at MoMA, New York (January)
	Henri Cartier-Bresson, Les Européens
1956	The Family of Man exhibition is held at the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo, and attracts large crowds (March-April); later the first International Subjective Photography exhibition takes place at the same location (December)
	William Klein, New York (Life is Good and Good for You in New York)
	Josef Sudek Fofografie
	O. Winston Link, *Hot Shot Eastbound at Iaeger Drive-In, West Virginia*
1957	Picture Post closes (1 June)
	Lucien Clergue, Corps mémorables
1958	Robert Frank, Les Américains: photographies de Robert Frank (Paris)/The Americans (New York, 1959)
	Ansel Adams, *Aspens, Northern New Mexico*
1959	Launch of 35 mm Nikon F SLR by Nippon Kogaku (later Nikon)
	The Family of Man exhibition reaches Moscow
	VIVO agency launched in Tokyo (July), and lasts until 1961
	Bernd Becher and Hilla Wobeser (later Becher) begin collaborating on images of industrial structures in western Germany
	A selection of W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh photographs appears in Photography Annual
	Richard Avedon, Observations
	Jeanloup Sieff, Borinage
1960	Federico Fellini's film La dolce vita gives currency to the term paparazzo for intrusive celebrity photographers
	Irving Penn, Moments Preserved
	Alberto Korda, *Il guerillero heroico (Che Guevara)* (5 March)
1961	Creation of the first successful holograms
	Bill Brandt, Perspective of Nudes
1962	John Szarkowski succeeds Edward Steichen as director of the department of photography at MoMA, New York
	Bert Stern photographs Marilyn Monroe (July), shortly before her death
	American aerial reconnaissance photographs identify Russian missiles positioned in western Cuba (October)
	Malick Sidibé opens Studio Malick in Bamako, Mali
	Eliot Porter, with texts by H. D. Thoreau, In Wildness is the Preservation of the World
1963	Kodak Instamatic series launched (February)
	First production 35 mm SLR camera with through-the-lens (TTL) metering, Tokyo Kogaku's Topcon RE Super
	Nippon Kogaku launches the Nikonos underwater camera
	An acclaimed exhibition of Jacques-Henri Lartigue's early photographs is held at MoMA, New York
	Publication of the first Pirelli Calendar
1964	The young Chinese photographer Li Zhensheng joins the Heilongjiang Daily in Harbin in north-eastern China (October); later he photographs events of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)
	Edwin Smith (with Edward Hyams), The English Garden
1965	Pierre Bourdieu, Un art moyen: essais sur les usages sociaux de la photographie (Paris)/Photography: A Middlebrow Art (New York, 1996)
	Lennart Nilsson, A Child is Born
1966	The Photographer's Eye exhibition at MoMA, New York
	Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup
	Hou Bo, *Mao Zedong Swimming in the Yangtze River*
1967	New Documents exhibition at MoMA, New York
	Founding of the Friends of Photography at Carmel, California
	Ernest Cole, House of Bondage
1968	The radical Japanese journal and collective Provoke is founded (November) by Daido Moriyama and others
	Laura Gilpin, The Enduring Navaho
	Eddie Adams, *General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executes a Vietcong Prisoner in a Saigon Street* (1 February)
	Ronald L. Haeberle, *Massacre of Villagers at My Lai 4, South Vietnam* (16 March; the pictures are not published until November 1969)
1969	Ralph Gibson founds Lustrum Press in New York
	The Lee Witkin photographic gallery opens in New York
	Harlem on my Mind exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
	MoMA, New York, acquires the Eugène Atget archive
	Neil Armstrong, *Buzz Aldrin on the Moon* (20 July), taken with a Hasselblad 500SL camera
1970	E. J. Bellocq's rediscovered *Storyville Portraits* of New Orleans prostitutes, taken c.1912 and newly printed by Lee Friedlaender, are exhibited at MoMA, New York
	The French Law of 17 July 1970 severely restricts the photographic invasion of privacy
	Inauguration of the Arles Festival
	Ralph Gibson, The Somnambulist
	Bernd and Hilla Becher, Anonymous Sculptures
	Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Diary of a Century
	Kishin Shinoyama, Nude
1971	The Photographers' Gallery opens in London
	Sotheby's, London, holds its first photographic auction, organized by Philippe Garner
	Appearance of the Spanish journal Nueva lente
	Philip Jones Griffiths, Vietnam Inc.
	Nobuyoshi Araki, Sentimental Journey
	Larry Clark, Tulsa
1972	Launch of Olympus's OM SLR system with the mechanical OM-1
	Bell Systems USA announces the use of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for a solid-state camera
	Polaroid SX-70 Deluxe instant-picture camera, with ultrasonic autofocus system
	The Musée Niépce opens at Châlon-sur-Saône
	Diane Arbus becomes (posthumously) the first photographer to be represented at the Venice Biennale
	Publication of Life magazine suspended (December)
	The publishing house La Azotea is founded in Argentina; in general, book publishing becomes an increasingly important activity for photographers
	The first of W. Eugene Smith's photographs of pollution in Minamata, Japan, appear in Life (2 June); they are exhibited in Japan and elsewhere from 1973 and are published as a book in 1975
	Daido Moriyama, Bye Bye Photography
	Nick Ut, *Napalm Attack, Trang Bang, South Vietnam* (8 June)
1973	Sygma agency founded in Paris
	Harold E. Edgerton, *Bullet Passing through a Candle Flame*
1974	The Camera and Dr Barnardo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London includes images of Victorian child prostitutes by ‘Francis Hetling’ shown later (1978) to be fakes: a symptom of the rising value of the market in historic photographs
	International Center of Photography founded in New York
	New Japanese Photography exhibition at MoMA, New York, curated by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi
	Tony Ray-Jones (d. 1971), A Day Off: An English Journal
	Bernd and Hilla Becher, *Water-Towers, 1*
1975	The Fox Talbot Museum opens at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire
	New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, organized by William Jenkins, at the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House
	The Camera Obscura gallery opens in Stockholm
	Mervyn Bishop, *Prime Minister Gough Whitlam Pours Soil into the Hand of Traditional Gurindji Landowner Vincent Lingiari, Northern Territory, [Australia]*
	Josef Koudelka, Gypsies
1976	Introduction of ASA 400-rated colour negative film (Fujicolor FII 400), 11 million times more sensitive than the bitumen-coated plates used by Niépce in the 1820s
	Founding of Contact Press Images
	William Eggleston's Guide exhibition of colour photographs at MoMA, New York
	Susan Meiselas, Carnival Strippers
1977	Konica C35A autofocusing compact camera, using infrared sensing
	The Hackney Flashers, a socialist and feminist collective, is founded in east London
	Stills Gallery opens in Edinburgh
	Cindy Sherman begins the series Untitled Film Stills (1977-80)
	Kosti Ruohamaa, Night Train at Wiscasset Station
	Humphrey Spender, Britain in the '30s
	Thomas Nelson, A Practical Introduction to the Art of Daguerrotypy in the 20th Century
1978	Ian Berry, The English
	Mirrors and Windows exhibition at MoMA, New York
1979	Founding of the Consejo Argentina de Fotografía
	Jo Spence, Beyond the Family Album
1980	First Week of Spanish Photography in Barcelona (May)
	The Imaginary Photo Museum exhibition at Photokina, Cologne
	David Bailey's Trouble and Strife
	Martine Franck, Le Temps de vieillir
	Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire (Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography)
	Annie Leibovitz, *John Lennon and Yoko Ono*
1981	Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills exhibited at Metro Pictures, New York
	Tee A. Corinne's series Yantras of Womanlove
	Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua
	Helmut Newton, *Self-Portrait with Wife and Model*
1982	Demonstration of Sony's ‘still-video’ Mavica camera, recording up to 50 analogue images on a magnetic disc
	Launch of Kodak disc camera. Production continues until 1988
	A survey estimates that c.20 million working cameras exist in France, and that 62 per cent of households own at least one
	Susan Sontag, On Photography
	Bert Stern, The Last Sitting
	Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places
1983	The National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television opens in Bradford, an outstation of the Science Museum in London
	Scottish Society for the History of Photography founded
	The Ken Domon Museum, Japan's first museum dedicated exclusively to photography, opens in Sakata
	Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Byker
	Robert Mapplethorpe, Lady: Lisa Lyon
	Roman Vishniac, A Vanished World
	Michael Hiley, Seeing through Photographs
1984	Launch of the fully automated Minolta Dynax 7000 (Maxxum 7000) 35 mm SLR
	The National Galleries of Scotland create the Scottish National Photography Collection
	The J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, founds a department of photography, of which Weston Naef becomes director
	Oliviero Toscani begins his association with the Benetton clothing firm (until 2000)
	The Picture Photo Space gallery opens in Osaka, Japan
	David Williams, Pictures from No Man's Land
1985	Richard Avedon, In the American West
	Takeshi Ozawa et al. (eds.), The Complete History of Japanese Photography (12 vols., completed in 1988)
	Black Sun: The Eyes of Four exhibition (Eikoh Hosoe, Masahisa Fukase, Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu) at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, then in London and Philadelphia
1986	Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
	André de Dienes, Marilyn mon amour
	South Africa: The Cordoned Heart, book and exhibition sponsored by the anti-apartheid agency Afrapix
1987	Controversial Corps à corps exhibition held by the French group Noir Limite
	Andres Serrano, *Piss Christ*
1988	Foundation of the Daguerrian Society in the USA
1989	Canon and Fuji launch consumer electronic cameras, recording analogue images on, respectively, floppy disks and memory cards
	The 150th ‘official’ anniversary of photography is celebrated with exhibitions including The Art of Photography, 1939-1989 at the Royal Academy, London, and On the Art of Fixing a Shadow at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago
	The exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment arouses major controversy
	The Ansel Adams Center for Photography opens in San Francisco
	David Goldblatt founds the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg
	Japan Photographers' Association founded, for both professionals and amateurs
1990	The Hubble Space Telescope, using a CCD array to capture astronomical images, is launched into orbit by the US space shuttle Discovery
	The first edition of Adobe Photoshop image manipulation software is launched
	Photography Until Now exhibition at MoMA, New York, followed by the retirement of John Szarkowski as director of the photography department
	Ken Burns makes extensive use of historic photographs in his television documentary series The American Civil War
	Fay Godwin, Our Forbidden Land
	Pierre Mac Orlan and Marcel Bovis, Fêtes foraines
1991	Kodak and Philips launch the Photo CD system
	The beginning of a spate of censorship scandals in Japan, involving the work of photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki and Kishin Shinoyama
	Foundation of the research-orientated Japan Society for the Arts and History of Photography
	Alexandras Macijauskas, My Lithuania
	Donna Ferrato, Living with the Enemy
1992	Launch of the Canon EOS-5, the first camera with eye-controlled autofocus
	Launch of Kodak DCS digital SLR cameras
	In their film Photowallahs, David and Judith MacDougall explore the culture of street photography in the north Indian town of Mussoorie
	Toshio Shibata, Quintessence of Japan
	Jeff Wall, *Dead Troops Talk*
1993	Sebastião Salgado, Workers
1994	The US Clementine spacecraft maps the entire surface of the moon and takes c.1.8 million photographs
	Sally Mann, Still Time
	Nouvelle Histoire de la photographie, edited by Michel Frizot
1995	Light from the Dark Room exhibition, National Galleries of Scotland
	Freelens professional photographers' association founded in Hamburg
	Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography opens fully, and hosts the first Tokyo International Photo-Biennale (June-July)
	Launch of Print Club (Puri-Kura) photo-booths in Japan
	1 June becomes an annual Day of Photography in Japan
1996	Launch of the Advanced Photographic System (APS) by a consortium of manufacturers
	First Tokyo Month of Photography (May)
1997	The Helene Anderson collection of avant-garde photographs of the 1920s and 1930s is auctioned at Sotheby's, London (May), fetching high prices
	Founding of Getty Images Inc.
	Opening of Tokyo Photographic Cultural Centre
1998	Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography exhibition at the Barbican Gallery, London
	David Goldblatt, South Africa: The Structure of Things Then Raghubir Singh, River of Colour
1999	The Royal Library of Copenhagen's collection of 10 million pictures becomes the Nationale Fotomuseum
	A large part of the Jammes collection of 19th-century and modernist photography is auctioned at Sotheby's, London, achieving record prices and a total of over £6 million; Gustave Le Gray's La Grande Vague, Sète fetches £507, 000 (c.$800, 000)
	The New York collector John Pritzker pays over $1 million for a print of Man Ray's *Glass Tears*
	Online sales of photography are boosted by the creation of *www.eyestorm.com*
	Daido Moriyama et al., Stray Dog
	Patricia Macdonald (with John Berger), Once in Europa
	Annie Leibovitz, Women
2000	Photojournalists and other professionals adopt digital photography in ever larger numbers; Canon launches its last film-based professional SLR, the EOS-1V
	Paris en 3D exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris
	How You Look at It exhibition, an overview of 20th-century photography, at the Sprengel Museum, Hanover
	Inauguration of an annual Documentary Photo Festival at Miyazaki, Japan. However, economic depression leads to the closure of many photographic galleries and periodicals
	Naoya Hatekeyama, Underground
	Sooni Taraporevala, The Parsis of India: A Photographic Journey
2001	Digital cameras outsell film cameras in Japan (and in the USA in 2003)
	Founding of VII photographic agency by James Nachtwey and others
	Andreas Gursky retrospective at MoMA, New York, curated by Peter Galassi; a print of his *Montparnasse* (1994) sets a record for contemporary photography by fetching c.$600, 000
	Wolfgang Tillmans wins the Turner Prize at Tate Britain, London
	Closure of the Friends of Photography (October)
	Hiroshi Sugimoto, Architecture of Time
	Jean Gaumy, Men at Sea
2002	Production of Olympus OM film cameras ceases
	The first consumer-level camera phones are launched
	The exhibition Ansel Adams at 100 tours the USA and Europe
2003	Launch of the Canon EOS 300D 6.3 megapixel digital SLR for under £1, 000
	Launch of the Olympus E-1 digital SLR, incorporating the Four Thirds sensor system and using lenses designed exclusively for digital imaging
	The Japanese manufacturing giants Konica and Minolta merge to become Konica-Minolta (October)
	Guy Bourdin exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
	Transfer of the RPS photographic collection to the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television, Bradford
	Cruel and Tender exhibition at Tate Modern, London, its first exclusively photographic show
	Lartigue: l'album d'une vie exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, Paris (and the Hayward Gallery, London, in 2004); another major Paris show, Le Daguerréotype français: un objet photographique celebrates pioneering French photography
	Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
	Li Zhensheng, Red-Color News Soldier
2004	Kodak ends production of APS cameras and embarks on a restructuring of its business worldwide
	Launch of the Nikon F6, predicted in some quarters to be the company's last professional film-based SLR
	Launch of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II digital SLR, with 16.7 million pixels
	Samsung launches a 5-megapixel camera phone. A Fonetography exhibition is held at the AOP Gallery, London
	Ilford Ltd., specialists in black-and-white film materials, go into administration
	Two NASA exploration vehicles soft-land on Mars and begin transmitting stereoscopic digital images of the terrain
	Opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC, incorporating a major photographic archive (21 October)
	The Cable Factory Photography Gallery opens in Helsinki
	At its annual award ceremony in November, the RPS honours the lifetime achievements of the portraitist Arnold Newman and documentary photographer Humphrey Spender. Other awards illustrate the many-sidedness of the medium in the early 21st century. Those honoured include the photojournalists Terry O'Neill and Simon Norfolk; the picture editor Aidan Sullivan; the nature photographer Andy Callow; the cinematographer Seamus McGarvey; Eric Fossum and Peter Burns for research on digital image processing, and Efthimia Bilissi for work on image reproduction via the Internet; the collector and auctioneer Philippe Garner; the hologram collector Jonathan Ross; the photographic publisher Dewi Lewis; and Anne McCauley, Colin Harding, Val Williams, and Mark Holborn for curatorship and historical scholarship
2005	The Japanese firm Kyocera, maker of Contax and Yashica cameras, announces its withdrawal from camera production and concentration on camera phones

Archaeology Dictionary: chronology

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[De]

An ordered sequence of related events, episodes, or defined blocks of time. A relative chronology exists where items in the sequence are related to one another but not to absolute dates, such as may be established through stratigraphy, typology, artefact correlations, or cross-dating. An absolute chronology exists where the items in the sequence are each independently dated in calendar years using techniques such as radiocarbon dating or dendrochronology.

Buddhism Dictionary: chronology

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c.1500-1000 bce	Vedic period in India
c.1000-800 bce	Composition of Brāhmaṇas
c.800-500 bce	Composition of major Upaniṣads
c.500 bce	Life of Lao-tsu
552-479 bce	Life of Confucius
c.485-405 bce	Life of the Buddha (Śākyamuni)
c.465-413 bce	Reign of Bimbisāra
c.405 bce	Council of Rājagṛha
327-325 bce	Alexander the Great in India
322-298 bce	Reign of Candragupta Maurya
303 bce	Megasthenese at court of Candragupta
c.300 bce	Council of Vaiśālī
c.284 bce	Council of Pāṭaliputra I
c.272-231 bce	Reign of Aśoka
c.250 bce	Council of Pāṭaliputra II
247 bce	Mahinda introduces Buddhism to Sri Lanka
200 bce	Beginnings of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Composition of Prajñā-pāramitā texts begins.
c.200-000 bce	Stūpa construction at Sāñcī
148 bce	An Shih-kao arrives in China and establishes first translation bureau
200 bce-200 ce	Invasion of India by Śuṇgas and Yavanas (187-30 bce), Śakas and Pahlavas (100-75 bce), and Kuṣāṇas (1st-2nd century ce)
101-77 bce	Reign of Duṭṭhagāmaṇi Abhaya in Sri Lanka; Buddhism becomes state religion
c.100-000 bce	Abhayagiri monastery founded in Sri Lanka
29-17 bce	Pāli Canon written down in Sri Lanka during reign of Vaṭṭagāmaṇi Abhaya
c.100-000 ce	Buddhism enters central Asia and China. Composition of Lotus Sūtra and other early Mahāyāna texts
c.100-200 ce	Founding of Nālandā
c.200-300 ce	Buddhism arrives in Vietnam
c.100-200 ce	Council of Kaniṣka
150-250 ce	Life of Nāgārjuna
c.200 ce	Buddhism transmitted to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia
c.300 ce	Life of Asaṇga and Vasubandhu
334-416 ce	Life of Hui-yüan
343-413 ce	Life of Kumārajīva
350-650 ce	Gupta dynasty in India, Buddhist philosophy and art flourish
372 ce	Buddhism transmitted to Korea
399-414 ce	Fa-hsien travels to India
c.400-500 ce	Life of Buddhaghoṣa
c.500-600 ce	Composition of tantric texts in India
499-569 ce	Life of Paramārtha
c.500 ce	Development of Hua-yen, T'ien-t'ai, Ch'an, and Pure Land schools in China
520 ce	Bodhidharma arrives in China
538-97 ce	Life of Chih-i; development of T'ien-t'ai school
552 ce	Buddhism enters Japan from Korea
572-621 ce	Prince Shotoku sponsors Buddhism in Japan
581-618 ce	Chinese Sui dynasty
c.600 ce	first diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet
c.600 ce	Life of Dharmakīrti; flourishing of logic and epistemology
617-86 ce	Life of Woˇnhyo; foundation of ‘unitive Buddhism’ in Korea
618-50 ce	Life of Songtsen Gampo; establishment of Buddhism in Tibet.
618-907 ce	Chinese T'ang dynasty; golden age of Buddhism in China
625-702 ce	Life of Uˇisang; introduction of Hwaoˇm (Hua-yen) into Korea
629-45 ce	Hsüan-tsang travels to India
638-713 ce	Life of Hui-neng; Northern-Southern schools controversy
643-712 ce	Life of Fa-tsang; consolidation of Hua-yen school
650-950 ce	Pala dynasty in India
668-918 ce	Unified Silla Period in Korea; Buddhism flourishes
671-95 ce	I-ching travels to India
c.700 ce	Life of Padmasambhava
c.700 ce	Northern-Southern Schools controversy in Japan
c.700 ce	Esoteric school (Chen-yen tsung) develops in China
c.700-800 ce	Construction of Borobudur
c.700-1100 ce	Pala dynasty; Mahāyāna and tantric Buddhism flourish; consolidation of school of logic and epistemology (pramāṇa)
710-94 ce	Nara period in Japan; Six Schools of Nara Buddhism
742 ce	Council of Lhasa
767 ce	Construction of Samyé monastery in Tibet
767-822 ce	Life of Saichō; founding of Tendai school
774-835 ce	Life of Kūkai; founding of Shingon school
794-1185 ce	Heian period in Japan
c.800 ce	Founding of Vikramaśīla monastery
836-42 ce	Reign of Lang Darma and suppression of Buddhism in Tibet
845 ce	Persecution of Buddhism in China
960-1279 ce	Sung dynasty in China
978-1392 ce	Koryoˇ period in Korea
983 ce	First printing of Chinese Buddhist canon (Szechuan edition)
1012-97 ce	Life of Marpa and origins of Kagyü order
1016-1100 ce	Life of Nāropa
1040-77 ce	King Anawrahtā unifies Burma and gives allegiance to Theravāda Buddhism
1040-1123 ce	Life of Milarepa
1042 ce	Atīśa arrives in Tibet; beginning of second diffusion of Buddhism
1055-1101 ce	Life of Uˇich'oˇn
1073 ce	Sakya order of Tibetan Buddhism founded
1079-1153 ce	Life of Gampopa
c.1100 ce	Construction of Angkor Wat
1133-1212 ce	Life of Hōnen, founding of Jōdo-shu school
1141-1215 ce	Life of Eisai; transmission of Rinzai Zen to Japan
1158-1210 ce	Life of Chinul; Chogye order founded; development of Sŏn in Korea
1173-1262 ce	Life of Shinran; founding of Jōdo-shinshū in Japan
1185-1392 ce	Kamakura Period in Japan
1197 ce	Nālandā University sacked by Mahmud Ghorī
c.1200 ce	Buddhism disappears from north India. Traces linger in south.
c.1200 ce	Printing of Tripiṭaka Koreana
1200-53 ce	Life of Dōgen; Sōtō Zen established in Japan
1222-82 ce	Life of Nichiren
1239-89 ce	Life of Ippen; foundation of Jishū school
1244 ce	Sakya Paṇḍita converts Mongols to Buddhism
c.1260 ce	Theravāda declared state religion of kingdom of Sukhothai (Thailand)
1290-1364 ce	Life of Butön; compilation of Tibetan canon.
1357-1419 ce	Life of Tsongkhapa; Gelukpa order founded in Tibet
1360 ce	Theravāda becomes state religion of Thailand
1368-1644 ce	Ming dynasty in China
1392-1909 ce	Ch'osŏn period in Korea, Buddhism suppressed
1411 ce	Tibetan Kanjur printed in China
1578 ce	Office of Dalai Lama instituted by Mongols
1617-82 ce	Life of Dalai Lama V and beginning of rule of Tibet by Dalai Lamas
1644-94 ce	Life of Bashō; Buddhism influence on haiku and the arts in Japan
c.1700 ce	Beginning of colonial period and Western domination of south and south-east Asia
1749 ce	Mongolian Buddhist canon translated from Tibetan
c.1800 ce	Beginning of the academic study of Buddhism by Western scholars
1823 ce	Royal Asiatic Society founded
1851-1868 ce	Reign of Rama IV in Thailand; reform of Thai Saṃgha
1853 ce	First Buddhist temple founded in USA, in San Francisco.
1868-1912 ce	Meiji period in Japan; Buddhism suppressed in favour of Shintō
1870-1945 ce	Life of Nishida Kitarō, founder of Kyoto school
1875 ce	Theosophical Society founded
1879 ce	Publication of the The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold
1881 ce	Pali Text Society founded in England by T. W. Rhys Davids
1891 ce	Mahabodhi Society founded by Anagārika Dharmapāla
1891-1956 ce	Life of B. Ambedkar; conversion of former Untouchables in India
1899 ce	Buddhist Churches of America founded
1924 ce	The Buddhist Society founded in London
1924 ce	Woˇn Buddhism founded
1924-9 ce	Compilation of Chinese canon (Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō) in Japan
1937 ce	Nichiren Shōshū Sōkagakkai formally established
1938 ce	Risshō Koseikai founded
1950 ce	People's Liberation Army enters Tibet
1950 ce	World Fellowship of Buddhists founded
1954-6 ce	Council of Rangoon
1959 ce	Dalai Lama XIV flees to India; persecution of Buddhism in Tibet by Chinese
1967 ce	Friends of the Western Buddhist Order founded
1970 ce	Development of Engaged Buddhism
1973 ce	Vajradhatu Foundation founded
1976 ce	International Association of Buddhist Studies founded
1989 ce	International Network of Engaged Buddhists founded
1995 ce	UK Association of Buddhist Studies (UKABS) founded
2001 ce	Destruction of standing Buddha statues at Bāmiyān by Taliban regime

Wikipedia: Chronology

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For other uses, see Chronology (disambiguation). For specific lists of events, see Timeline.

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

Joseph Scaliger's De emendatione temporum (1583) began the modern science of chronology^[1]

Chronology (from Latin chronologia, from Ancient Greek χρόνος, chronos, "time"; and -λογία, -logia) is a chronicle or arrangement of events in their time order of occurrence.^[2] General chronology is the science of locating and resolution of temporal sequence of past events in time^[2]

Chronology is part of periodization. It is also part of the discipline of history including earth history and geochronology dependent disciplines (See Prehistoric chronologies below) and the earth sciences. When used for specific examples, a chronology is a sequential arrangement of events, such as a chronicle or, particularly when involving graphical or literary elements, a timeline.

1 Definition
- 1.1 Related fields
2 Calendar and era
- 2.1 Ab Urbe condita Era
- 2.2 Astronomical Era
3 Prehistoric chronologies
4 Chronological analysis
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

Definition

A chronology may be either relative—that is, locating related events relative to each other—or absolute—locating these events to specific dates in a chronological era. Even this distinction may be blurred by use of different calendars. In Judeo-Christian cultures, historical dates in an absolute chronology are understood to be referred to the Christian era, in combination with the proleptic Julian calendar (originally) and the Gregorian calendar respectively.

Related fields

Chronology is the science of locating historical events in time, and is distinct from, but relies upon chronometry or timekeeping, and historiography, which examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods. Radiocarbon dating estimates the age of formerly living things by measuring the proportion of carbon-14 isotope in their carbon content. Dendrochronology estimates the age of trees by correlation of the various growth rings in their wood to known year-by-year reference sequences in the region to reflect year-to-year climatic variation. Dendrochronology is used in turn as a calibration reference for radiocarbon dating curves.

Calendar and era

v • d • e Calendars (list)

Wide use	Astronomical · Chinese · Gregorian· Islamic · ISO Calendar types: Lunisolar · Solar · Lunar

Selected use	Akan · Assyrian · Armenian · Attic · Aztec (Tonalpohualli – Xiuhpohualli) · Babylonian · Bahá'í · Bengali · Berber · Bikram Samwat · Buddhist · Burmese · Byzantine ·Celtic · Coptic · Egyptian · Ethiopian · French Republican · Germanic · Hebrew · Hellenic · Hindu · Indian · Solar Hejri (Jalali, Iranian, Persian) · Irish · Japanese · Javanese · Juche · Julian · Korean · Kurdish · Lithuanian · Malayalam · Maya (Tzolk'in – Haab') · Minguo · Nanakshahi · Nepal Sambat · Pawukon · Pentecontad · Rapa Nui · Roman · Rumi · Soviet · Tamil · Thai (Lunar – Solar) · Tibetan · Vietnamese· Xhosa · Yoruba · Zoroastrian Calendar types: Runic · Mesoamerican (Long Count – Calendar round) Christian variants: Julian calendar · Calendar of saints · Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar · Liturgical year

Rarely used	Darian calendar · Discordian calendar

Display types and applications	Perpetual calendar · Wall calendar · Economic calendar

Main article: Calendar

The familiar terms calendar and era (within the meaning of a coherent system of numbered calendar years) concern two complementary fundamental concepts of chronology. For example during eight centuries the calendar belonging to the Christian era, which era was taken in use in the eighth century by Bede, was the Julian calendar, but after the year 1582 it was the Gregorian calendar. Dionysius Exiguus (about the year 500) was the founder of that era, which is nowadays the most widespread dating system on earth.

Ab Urbe condita Era

Main article: Ab urbe condita

Ab Urbe condita is Latin for "from the founding of the City (Rome)",^[3] traditionally set in 753 BC. It was used to identify the Roman year by a few Roman historians. Modern historians use it much more frequently than the Romans themselves did; the dominant method of identifying Roman years was to name the two consuls who held office that year. Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was.

It was used systematically for the first time only about the year 400, by the Iberian historian Orosius. Pope Boniface IV, in about the year 600, seems to have been the first who made a connection between these this era and Anno Domini. (AD 1 = AUC 754.)

Astronomical Era

Main article: Astronomical year numbering

Dionysius Exiguus’ Anno Domini era (which contains only calendar years AD) was extended by Bede to the complete Christian era (which contains, in addition all calendar years BC, but no year zero). Ten centuries after Bede, the French astronomers Philippe de la Hire (in the year 1702) and Jacques Cassini (in the year 1740), purely to simplify certain calculations, put the Julian Dating System (proposed in the year 1583 by Joseph Scaliger) and with it an astronomical era into use, which contains a leap year zero, which the year 1 (AD) precedes but does not exactly coincide with the year 1 BC. Astronomers never preposed seriously to replace our era with their astronomical era (which for that matter coincides exactly with the Christian era where it concerns the calendar years after the year 4).

Prehistoric chronologies

While of critical importance to the historian, methods of determining chronology are used in most disciplines of science, especially astronomy, geology, paleontology and archaeology.

In the absence of written history, with its chronicles and king lists, late 19th century archaeologists found that they could develop relative chronologies based on pottery techniques and styles. In the field of Egyptology, William Flinders Petrie pioneered sequence dating to penetrate pre-dynastic Neolithic times, using groups of contemporary artefacts deposited together at a single time in graves and working backwards methodically from the earliest historical phases of Egypt. This method of dating is known as seriation.

Known wares discovered at strata in sometimes quite distant sites, the product of trade, helped extend the network of chronologies. Some cultures have retained the name applied to them in reference to characteristic forms, for lack of an idea of what they called themselves: "The Beaker People" in northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BCE, for example. The study of the means of placing pottery and other cultural artifacts into some kind of order proceeds in two phases, classification and typology: Classification creates categories for the purposes of description, and typology seeks to identify and analyse changes that allow artifacts to be placed into sequences.^[4]

Laboratory techniques developed particularly after mid-20th century helped constantly revise and refine the chronologies developed for specific cultural areas. Unrelated dating methods help reinforce a chronology, an axiom of corroborative evidence. Ideally, archaeological materials used for dating a site should complement each other and provide a means of cross-checking. Conclusions drawn from just one unsupported technique are usually regarded as unreliable.

Chronological analysis

Several legendary sources tend to assign unrealistically long lifespans to pre-historical heroes and monarchs (e.g. Egypt, Hebrews, Japanese), if the number of years there reported are understood as years of more than 340 days. Though chronologies formulated before the 1960s are subject to serious skepticism today, more recent results are more robust than readily appears to journalists and enthusiastic amateurs. Bayesian inference can be applied in the analysis of chronological information, including radiocarbon-derived dates.

References

Citations and notes

^ Richards, E. G. (1998). Mapping Time: The Calendar and History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 0-19-286205-7.
^ ^a ^b WordNet Search - 3.0, "History"
^ Literally translated as "From the city having been founded".
^ Greene, Kevin (November 2007). Archaeology : An Introduction. University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Chapter 4. http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/kevin.greene/wintro/chap4.htm. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.

General information

Hegewisch, D. H., & Marsh, J. (1837). Introduction to historical chronology. Burlington [Vt.]: C. Goodrich.
B. E. Tumanian, “Measurement of Time in Ancient and Medieval Armenia,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 5, 1974, pp. 91-98.
Kazarian, K. A., “History of Chronology by B. E. Tumanian,” Journal for the History of Astronomy, 4, 1973, p.137
Porter, T. M., "The Dynamics of Progress: Time, Method, and Measure". The American Historical Review, 1991.

External links

Look up chronology in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Chronology 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Christian Chronology
Regnal Chronologies
Dating Methods from pastperfect.info at the Internet Archive. Accessed 2008-01-04.
Dating the Past
Pragmatic Bayesians: a decade of integrating radiocarbon dates in chronological models from the University of Sheffield at the Internet Archive. Accessed 2008-01-04.
"General Chronology". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/General_Chronology.

v • d • e Time

Major concepts	Time · Eternity · Arguments for eternity · Immortality Deep time · History · Past · Present · Future · Futurology	Time Portal

Measurement and Standards	Chronometry · UTC · UT · TAI · Second · Minute · Hour · Sidereal time · Solar time · Time zone Clock · Horology · History of timekeeping devices · Astrarium · Marine chronometer · Sundial · Water clock Calendar · Day · Week · Month · Year · Tropical year · Julian · Gregorian · Islamic Intercalation · Leap second · Leap year

Chronology	Astronomical chronology · Geologic Time · Geological history · Geochronology · Archaeological dating Calendar era · Regnal year · Chronicle · Timeline · Periodization

Religion and Mythology	Time and fate deities · Wheel of time · Kāla · Kalachakra · Prophecy · Dreamtime

Philosophy	Causality · Eternalism · Eternal return · Event · The Unreality of Time · A-series and B-series · B-Theory of time Endurantism · Four dimensionalism · Perdurantism · Presentism · Temporal finitism · Temporal parts

Physical Sciences	Time in physics · Spacetime · Absolute time and space · T-symmetry Arrow of time · Chronon · Fourth dimension · Planck epoch · Planck time · Time domain Theory of relativity · Time dilation · Gravitational time dilation · Coordinate time · Proper time

Biology	Chronobiology · Circadian rhythms

Psychology	Mental chronometry · Reaction time · Sense of time · Specious present

Sociology and Anthropology	Futures studies · Long Now Foundation · Time discipline · Time use research

Economics	Newtonian time in economics · Time value of money · Time Banking · Time-based currency

Related topics	Space · Duration · Time capsule · Time travel · Time signature · System time · Metric time · Hexadecimal time · Carpe diem · Tempus fugit

v • d • e Chronology

Major subjects	Time · Astronomy · Geology · Paleontology · Archaeology · History	Chronology Portal

Eras and Epochs	Calendar Eras: Ab urbe condita · Anno Domini / Common Era · Anno Mundi · Byzantine Era · Spanish era · Before Present · Hijri · Egyptian · Sothic cycle · Hindu units of measurement · Hindu Yugas Regnal year: Canon of Kings · King lists · Limmu · Seleucid era · Era name: Chinese · Japanese · Korean

Calendars	Pre-Julian Roman · Original Julian · Proleptic Julian · Revised Julian Gregorian · Proleptic Gregorian · Old Style and New Style Lunisolar · Solar · Lunar · Islamic · Chinese sexagenary cycle Astronomical year numbering · ISO week date

Astronomic time and techniques	Astronomical chronology · Cosmic Calendar · Ephemeris · Galactic year · Metonic cycle · Milankovitch cycles

Geologic time scale and techniques	Deep time · Geological history · Geological time units: Eons · Eras · Periods • Epoch • Age Dating Standards: GSSA • GSSP Chronostratigraphy · Geochronology · Isotope geochemistry · Law of superposition · Optical dating · Samarium-neodymium dating

Archaeological techniques	Dating methodology Absolute dating · Incremental dating · Archaeomagnetic dating · Dendrochronology · Glottochronology · Ice core · Lichenometry · Paleomagnetism · Radiocarbon dating · Radiometric dating · Tephrochronology · Thermoluminescence dating · Uranium-lead dating Relative dating · Seriation · Stratification

Genetic techniques	Amino acid dating · Molecular clock

Related topics	Chronicle · New Chronology · Periodization · Synchronoptic view · Timeline · Year zero · Circa · Floruit

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Essential Desk Reference: Chronology

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c. 6000 BC	Farming begins in Tigris-Euphrates and Nile River Valleys
c. 4000 BC	Farming begins in Yellow River Valley
c. 3500 BC	Sumerian city-states emerge
3300 BC	Rulers divide Nile Valley into Upper and Lower Egypt by this time
c. 3100 BC	Egypt unified into single kingdom
c. 2800	Indus River Valley civilization begins
2180 BC	Egypt’s Middle Kingdom established
c. 2000 BC	Stonehenge built in England
c. 1760 BC	Hammurabi rules in Babylon
c. 1700 BC	Hebrew monotheism emerges
c. 1650 BC	Minoan civilization, based on Crete, expands
c. 1600 BC	Shang dynasty introduces writing in China
c. 1500 BC	Olmecs settle in Mexico.
c. 1450 BC	Earthquake destroys Minoan civilization
1299 BC	Egyptian pharoah Ramses I fights Hittites at Kadesh
c. 1250 BC	Moses leads Jews from Egypt to promised land of Palestine
c. 1200 BC	Trojan War
1122 BC	Zhou dynasty established in China
1000 BC	David begins reign as king of the Jews, defeats Philistines before his death in 961
c. 814 BC	Carthage founded by Phoenicians
776 BC	1st Olympic Games are staged at Olympia, Greece
753 BC	Traditional founding date of Rome
725 BC	Kushite kingdom of Nubia conquers Egypt
c. 600 BC	Zoroaster announces Zoroastrianism, a religion emphasizing spirits of good and evil
c. 545 BC	Cyrus the Great solidifies power and founds Persian Empire
509 BC	Rome forces out Etruscan kings, Roman Republic founded
492 BC	Persian Wars, a 40-year series of Persian military expeditions against the Greeks, begin
431 BC	Athens and Sparta oppose each other in Peloponnesian War
405 BC	Peloponnesian War concludes with Athens’ defeat at Aegospotami
371 BC	Thebes and Athens defeat Sparta
336 BC	Alexander the Great of Macedon conquers Greece
333 BC	Alexander defeats Darius at Issus
323 BC	Alexander dies; in less than 20 years his empire has been divided several times
241 BC	Rome defeats Carthage in 1st Punic War
218 BC	Hannibal leads Cathaginian forces across the Alps in 2nd Punic War
214 BC	Earliest version of the Great Wall amalgamated in China
201 BC	Roman general Scipio defeats Hannibal at Zama, ending 2nd Punic War
146 BC	3rd Punic War ends with destruction of Carthage, which becomes Roman province
136 BC	China’s Emperor Wudi makes Confucianism the basis of government administration
c. 60 BC	China’s Han dynasty extends control to central Asia
44 BC	Julius Caesar assassinated in Roman Senate by opponents of his dictatorship
27 BC	Augustus Caesar becomes emperor
c. 4 BC	Jesus born in Bethlehem, Palestine
c. 50 AD	Buddhist monks reach China
70	Jews revolt; Romans destroy temple in Jerusalem, end of Hebrew state
79	Roman city of Pompeii buried in volcanic ash from Vesuvius eruption
c. 100	Paper invented in China
265	China reunited under Western Jin dynasty, ending Three Kingdoms period
285	Emperor Diocletian divides Roman Empire into Eastern and Western realms
c. 300	Axum (Ethiopia) adopts Christianity
313	Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine grants freedom to all religions; Christians gain major influence by 330
410	Visigoths, led by Alaric, sack Rome
452	Attila the Hun’s invasion of Gaul stopped
476	Western Roman Empire begins to decline
486	Clovis defeats Romans in Gaul and establishes Merovingian dynasty
534	Byzantine Emperor Justinian conquers North Africa and Italy (554)
550	Northern India’s Gupta dynasty falls
551	Buddhism introduced into Japan 589 Sui dynasty reunifies China 618 Tang dynasty founded in China
622	Mohammed flees from Mecca to Medina in episode known as the Hejira
632	Death of Mohammed leads to struggle over succession; Islam divided
638	Umayyad dynasty founded in Jerusalem
652	Koran completed in final form
688	Islam’s Dome of the Rock begun in Jerusalem
710	Nara era begins in Japan
711	Moorish invasion of Spain starts
732	Charles Martel halts Muslim invasion of France
750	Al Mansur establishes Abbasid caliphate
774	Charlemagne conquers Italy, beginning major expansion of his empire
800	Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome
843	Treaty of Verdun divides Charlemagne’s empire into three parts
865	Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) and Roman Catholic forms of Christianity separate
955	Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor since 936, defeats Magyars at Lechfeld
960	Northern Song dynasty established in China
987	Quetzalcoatl, ruler of Mexico’s Toltecs, abdicates
c. 1000	Viking invasions of Europe peak; Leif Ericson sails to North America; Norse colony set up in Newfoundland
1031	Umayyad dynasty falls in Spain
1055	Muslims driven from Portugal by Ferdinand of Castile
1066	William of Normandy becomes king of England after defeating King Harold at Battle of Hastings
1071	Ottoman Empire established
1096	1st Crusade begins; crusaders take Jerusalem from Arabs
c. 1100	Cambodia’s Khmer empire achieves height of power
1204	4th Crusade takes Constatinople and founds Latin Empire of the East
1206	Genghis Khan begins reign as Mongol leader, assembling vast empire before his death in 1227
1215	England’s King John is pressured to sign Magna Carta, curbing royal power
1234	Mongols absorb China’s Chin Empire
1244	Turks capture Jerusalem; 7th Crusade (1248-50) is unable to retake city
1260	Kublai Khan becomes leader of the Mongols, establishes Yuan dynasty in China (1280)
1270	Louis IX of France dies in Tunis leading the 9th Crusade
1271	Marco Polo begins expedition to China
1273	1st Mongol invasion of Japan fails
1325	Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan established in Mexico
1327	England’s King Edward II deposed and killed
1337	Hundred Years’ War between England and France begins over claims to England’s throne
1348	Black Death begins to ravage Europe
1368	Rebellion against Mongol rule leads to founding of Ming dynasty in China
1378	Papacy splits, Great Schism results in popes installed at Rome and Avignon, France
1391	Tamerlane extends his power into Central Asia with defeat of Mongols’ Golden Horde
1399	England’s Richard II deposed; Henry IV ascends the throne
1421	Beijing becomes capital of China’s Ming dynasty
1431	French heroine Joan of Arc burned at the stake
1434	Medici family begins 60-year control of Florence
1453	Fall of Constantinople to Ottomans ends Byzantine Empire
1472	Russia’s Ivan the Great takes the title of tsar
1479	Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella unite their kingdoms of Aragon and Castile
1482	Agreement with the papacy permits Spain to put the church and Inquisition under royal control
1488	Explorer Bartolomeu Diaz sails around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope
1492	Christopher Columbus reaches the New World (Hispaniola); Spain captures Granada, completing reconquest of Spain from Moors
1498	Vasco da Gama lands in India after sailing around Cape of Good Hope
1500	Portugal claims Brazil
1517	Martin Luther writes 95 theses
1519	Hernan Cortes begins conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico; Ferdinand Magellan starts voyage that circumnavigates the world
c. 1519	Nanak establishes Sikhism as a religion
1520	Luther, excommunicated in 1520, addresses the Diet of Worms
1540	Jesuit order founded by Ignatius de Loyola
1541	Puritan theocracy founded by John Calvin at Geneva, Switzerland
1546	Catholic Counter Reformation, supported by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, opposes German Protestant princes
1563	Church of England (Anglican Church) established
1580	Philip II unites Spain and Portugal
1587	Japan expels Portuguese missionaries
1588	England defeats the Spanish Armada
1598	France’s Henry IV grants Protestant Huguenots equal rights with Catholics in Edict of Nantes
1603	Tokugawa (Edo) period begins in Japan
1618	Thirty Years War starts in Europe
1619	Mayflower lands Pilgrims on Cape Cod, Massachusetts
1642	English Civil War starts
1648	Peace of Westphalia ends Thirty Years War; Fronde uprisings try unsuccessfully to challenge royal power in France
1649	Charles I of England executed; Oliver Cromwell governs England through Commonwealth
1660	England restores monarchy with Charles II as king
1661	France’s Louis XIV begins ruling in his own right
1673	Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet explore Mississippi River for France
1676	King Philip’s War ends with defeat of Indians after decimating New England
1685	Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes, resulting in Huguenot emigration from France
1687	Austro-Hungarian forces defeat Turks at Mohacs, halting Turks expansion into Europe
1688	In Glorious Revolution, England deposes Catholic-supporting James II and replaces him with his Protestant daughter Mary
1713	Treaty of Utrecht, ending War of the Spanish Succession, keeps France and Spain separate
1725	Peter the Great of Russia dies
1726	Spiritual movement called the Great Awakening begins in American colonies
1741	Russia’s Vitus Bering explores Alaska
1754	French and Indian War begins in North America, with Britain and France vying for control of the continent
1756	Seven Years War starts in Europe
1763	Britain’s supremacy over France in North American and India confirmed by Treaty of Paris
1764	Stamp Act inspires protests in American colonies
1765	Egypt declares independence from Ottoman Empire
1768	James Cook begins exploration of Australia
1770	Boston Massacre increases American resentment of British
1773	Boston Tea Party protests British tax on tea in American colonies
1774	1st Continental Congress meets
1775	Battle of Lexington and Concord opens Revolutionary War
1776	American independence declared; Declaration of Independence signed
1783	Treaty of Paris formalizes American independence. Russia occupies Crimea
1788	U.S. Constitution ratified
1789	French Revolution begins
1792	France becomes a republic; Louis XVI executed in 1793
1793	Eli Whitney invents cotton gin, immensely speeding cotton production
1798	Britain’s Admiral Nelson defeats French at Battle of the Nile
1804	Napoleon takes the title of emperor
1807	British abolish slave trade
1811	Venezuela and Paraguay gain independence from Spain
1812	United States and Britain begin War of 1812. Napoleon invades Russia, resulting in huge losses
1814	Napoleon forced to abdicate and goes into exile. Washington, D.C. burned by British
1815	Napoleon returns to power but is defeated at Battle of Waterloo and exiled again. War of 1812 ends with American victory over British at Battle of New Orleans
1818	U.S.-Canadian border agreed upon
1819	Missouri Compromise establishes line between free and slave states
1820	Mexico and Peru gain independence from Spain
1821	Brazil becomes independent of Portugal
1822	Through Monroe Doctrine, United States warns European powers to stay out of colonial affairs in the Americas
1830	French depose Charles X, replacing him with Louis Philippe
1831	Nat Turner’s Rebellion, a U.S. slave uprising, results in about 60 white and 100 slave deaths
1836	Americans annihilated at Alamo during Texas Rebellion
1837	Queen Victoria ascends British throne
1839	Opium Wars start in China
1845	Potato Famine beings in Ireland, resulting in starvation and widespread emigration
1849	California gold rush follows discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848
1850	Compromise of 1850 attempts to resolve U.S. slavery questions
1852	Napoleon III takes power in France as emperor
1856	Crimean War ends
1858	Last of Indian Mutinies are suppressed by British in India
1861	Civil War begins with Confederate shelling of Ft. Sumter
1865	Civil War ends with Confederate surrender at Appomattox; Lincoln assassinated
1866	Prussia defeats Austria in Austro-Prussian War
1867	British North America Act forms Dominion of Canada. Shogunate abolished in Japan; Emperor Meiji ascends throne
1869	Suez Canal opens
1870	Empire falls after Prussia’s defeat of France in Franco-Prussian War
1876	Battle of the Little Bighorn. Alexander Graham Bell patents telephone
1878	Thomas Edison patents his light bulb
1881	Germany signs alliance with Russia and Austria
1884	Treaty of Berlin states the rights of European powers in Africa
1885	Canadian-Pacific Railway completed
1894	Dreyfus Affair surfaces in France
1895	After military victories, Japan wins concessions from China
1898	Spanish-American War results in U.S. territorial gains
1899	Boxer Rebellion in China brings foreign intervention
1902	Boer War ends in southern Africa
1903	Wilbur and Orville Wright make 1st airplane flight
1904	Revolution in Russia brings few reforms
1906	San Francisco earthquake and fire destroy much of the city
1908	Henry Ford markets 1st Model T
1910	Union of South Africa formed
1911	Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz overthrown. Sun Yat-sen establishes republic in China
1914	World War I begins after Austrian Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated. Panama Canal opens
1917	Russian Revolution overthrows tsar
1918	World War I ends with defeat of Germany
1919	Treaty of Versailles. League of Nations is established
1923	Modernization of Turkey begins under Kemal Ataturk
1927	Charles Lindbergh makes 1st non-stop solo flight across Atlantic Ocean
1928	Chiang Kai-shek becomes president of China
1929	Stock market crash on Wall St. leads to business depression
1931	Japan occupies Manchuria
1933	Adolf Hitler and Nazis come to power in Germany. Franklin Roosevelt inaugurates New Deal programs in United States
1935	Italy invades Ethiopia. Nuremberg Laws deprive Jews of all citizenship rights in Germany
1937	Japan starts war against China
1938	Germany annexes Austria
1939	World War II starts with Germany’s invasion of Poland
1940	Germany overruns France
1941	Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brings United States into World War II
1944	Normandy invasion initiates final phase of war against Germany
1945	Germany surrenders; United States drops two atomic bombs on Japan to end war in Pacific; United Nations founded
1947	Marshall Plan devised to rebuild post-war Europe. India gains independence from Britain
1948	Israel becomes independent. Berlin Airlift carries supplies to blockaded city
1949	Mao Zedong and communists set up People’s Republic of China. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established
1950	Korean War opens as North Korea invades South Korea
1954	Egypt declared a republic with Nasser as prime minister
1955	Warsaw Pact of Soviet Union and its satellites formed to oppose NATO. Vietnam divided into North and South by Geneva Conference
1956	Soviet troops intervene in Hungary to crush nationalist uprising. Egypt nationalizes Suez Canal, triggering war with Britain, France, and Israel
1957	Treaty of Rome establishes European Common Market
1958	Russians build Berlin Wall. U.S.-supported Bay of Pigs invasion fails in Cuba
1962	Soviets back down during Cuban Missile Crisis
1963	U.S. President Kennedy is assassinated and is succeeded by Lyndon Johnson
1964	Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizes U.S. action in Vietnam
1967	Israel defeats Arab coalition in Six Day War
1968	China’s Cultural Revolution comes to an end. Martin Luther King assassinated
1969	American astronauts walk on the moon
1973	Arab forces oppose Israel in Yom Kippur War. Last U.S. troops leave Vietnam. Military coup in Chile
1974	U.S. President Nixon resigns in wake of Watergate scandal
1975	Communist regimes take power in Vietnam and Cambodia
1978	Leaders of Egypt and Israel meet at Camp David. Spain returns to constitutional monarchy
1979	Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1982	Britain defeats Argentina in Falklands War
1986	Soviet Union starts reforms of glasnost and perestroika
1987	Iran-Contra Affair tarnishes Reagan administration
1988	Long Iran-Iraq war halted by truce. Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan
1989	Communist governments fall in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. United States invades Panama to topple General Noriega’s government. China kills pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square
1990	Iraq invades Kuwait, provoking international opposition. Germany reunifies. Yugoslavia’s republics begin to declare independence. Maastricht Treaty proposes European monetary union
1991	Iraq defeated by U.S.-led international force. Most former Soviet republics reassemble in looser Commonwealth of Independent States
1992	South Africa decides to end white-minority rule. Brutal civil wars continue in former Yugoslavia
1993	North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed. South Africa moves toward a multi-racial society. Israel and Palestinians sign peace agreement
1994	Nelson Mandela elected as South Africa’s 1st black president. Civil war breaks out in Rwanda. Russia faces internal unrest
1995	Israeli prime minister Itzhak Rabin is assassinated
1996	Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia reach agreement on peace
1997	Hong Kong comes under Chinese rule, ending British control. Rebellion in Zaire results in toppling of long-time leader Mobutu Sese Seko; nation takes new name as Democratic Republic of Congo
1998	Irish factions agree on basic framework for peace. Serbian province of Kosovo is the scene of massacres of ethnic Albanians
1999	U.S. President Clinton acquitted during impeachment trial. Conflict between Russians and Chechnyans escalates
2000	United Nations report on AIDS released; disease has killed 19 million people worldwide, another 34 million infected with AIDS virus, HIV

Atlas of World History. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1995.
Beeching, Cyril Leslie. A Dictionary of Dates, 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
McKay, John P., Bennett Hill, John Buckler, and Patricia Buckley Ebrey. A History of World Societies, 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Translations: Chronology

Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - kronologi

Nederlands (Dutch)
chronologie

Français (French)
n. - chronologie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Chronologie, Zeitfolge

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - χρονολογική επιστήμη, χρονολογία

Italiano (Italian)
cronologia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - cronologia (f)

Русский (Russian)
хронология

Español (Spanish)
n. - cronología

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kronologi

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
年代学, 年表

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 年代學, 年表

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 연대학, 연대기

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 年代学, 年代記, 年表, 年代順の配列

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) تسلسل زمني, علو تدوين التاريخ‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חקר האירועים ההיסטוריים כדי לקבוע תאריכי עבר, טבלה או מסמך המציגים את תאריכי העבר, כרונולוגיה‬

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