Does time move forward as our Western minds often believe, or is it in a circle as represented in the East? Is time driven by great people and institutions? Wars? Natural disasters? Divine interventions? Is there an art to how time is laid out, a geometry to the sequence of time and empires. As a student of early modern history, these are some of the questions that inform my collecting of timelines of various sorts, ancient and modern. My other collecting interest focuses on early printed books, primarily on religious and political topics. The laying out in time, whether in the Book of Revelation or in a political timeline of our country’s history, often weave together themes of meaning and politics.
I have chosen a packed example of one of my timelines. In the introduction the author William C. King made his intention clear:
“What we read from the printed page, soon fades from the memory. Information seen with the eye, becomes permanently fixed in the mind…. Illustrated information makes an indelible impression upon the memory. That which we read from the printed page is soon forgotten, but events, facts and men, seen in their proper relationship, become fixed in the mind without the task of memorizing.”
This chart was originally issued in King’s Illustrated Portfolio of Our Country (1906), a little-known volume consisting of 11 vivid, jam-packed, double-page charts and diagrams depicting different aspects of United States culture, economics, history, and politics, each accompanied by a page or two of explanatory text (verso). The linear nature of time, along with some well-known and some not so well-known events raises questions about how we conceptualize our past.
