Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline

Edward Quin’s 1828 “Historical Atlas” used a series of maps to show changes in the world’s political divisions. In successive maps, the clouds roll back to reveal how much of the world was known to the West at the time. The map at left shows the state of the West at the time of the death of Emperor Constantine, in 337.

 The “Temple of Time,” created in 1846 by the pioneering American girls’ educator Emma Willard, draws on the tradition of Renaissance “memory theaters,” mnemonic devices that allowed people to memorize information by imagining it as architectural details in a three-dimensional mental space. The vertical columns represent centuries, with those on the right showing names of important figures from the Old World while those on the left show figures from the New World.