Imaging / Photography Timeline Outline

Invention of the Telescope
(1608)

Images of Revolutionary Discoveries Concerning the Universe
(March 1610)

Graphic Portrayal of the Hitherto Unknown Microcosm
(1665)

Lichtenberg Figures
(1777)

Daguerreotypes: The First Commonly Used Photographic Process
(January 7 – August 19, 1839)

The First Separate Publication on Photography
(January 31, 1839)

The Basis for Blueprints
(1842)

The Doppler Principle
(1842)

One of the Earliest Photographs of Books
(1843 – 1844)

The First Book Illustrated with Photographs
(October 1843 – 1853)

Foundation of Microphotography; Landmark in Hematology, Oncology, and Pathology
(1844 – 1845)

The First Photographically Illustrated Book Commercially Published.
(June 1844 – April 1846)

Using Microphotography for Document Preservation
(1851 – 1852)

The First Relief Half-Tone
(1854)

The First Book of Printed Reproductions of Photographs
(1856 – 1857)

The First Clear Photographic Aerial View of a City
(October 13, 1860)

3-D Solar Imaging Reveals Details of Sunken Civil-War Era Steampship
(January 11, 1863)

The Pigeon Post into Paris: The First Important Application of Microfilm
(1870 – 1871)

Darwin Founds Ethology, Studies the Conveyance of Information, and Contributes to Psychology
(1872)

Calling for a Central Bibliographical Bureau Which Would Also Store Images
(July 25 – November 29, 1872)

The First Supersonic Image; The Mach Angle and Mach Number
(1877)

Invention of Photogravure
(1878)

Could Life From Other Planets Have Been Carried to Earth by Meteorites?
(1880)

The First Book on Aerial Photography
(1886)

The First Photo-Interview
(September 5, 1886)

The Telautograph
(July 31, 1888)

One of the Most Dramatic Problems in the Preservation of Media
(1889)

Rontgen Discovers X-Rays
(November 8, 1895)

Early Facsimile Transmission
(Circa 1901 – 1907)

The Photomicrographic Book
(1907)

Curtis's The North American Indian
(1907 – 1930)

The Basis for Computed Tomography
(1917)

The First Experimental Proof of General Relativity
(November 6, 1919)

The First Electronic Television Camera
(1923)

A Massive Central Library on Microform for Printing on Demand
(1925)

Kodachrome
(1935 – 1936)

Carlson invents Xerography
(1938)

The Bettmann Archive; the Beginning of the Visual Age
(1938)

Sealing of the Crypt of Civlization
(May 25, 1940)

Using Microforms to Conserve Library Space
(1944)

The First Phototypesetter
(1947)

Invention of Holography
(1947)

The First Xerographic Copier
(1949)

The Beginning of Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
(1953)

The Beginning of Medical Ultrasonography
(October 29, 1953)

Beginning of Doppler Ultrasound
(1957)

Invention of the Image Scanner; Creation of the First Digital Image
(1957)

The First Obstetrical or Gynecological Sonograms
(1958)

The Corona Strategic Imaging Satellites
(June 1959 – May 1972)

The Xerox 914
(September 16, 1959)

Changes in Tissue Density Can be Computed
(1963 – 1964)

The First Plasma Video Display (Neon Orange)
(1964)

Origins of Automated Facial Recognition
(1964 – 1966)

The Invention of Digital Image Processing
(1966)

First System for Interactive Display of Molecular Structures
(1966)

The Smallest Published Edition of the Bible, and the First to Reach the Moon
(1966)

The Rainbow Hologram or Benton Hologram
(1968)

Invention of Three-Dimensional Image Processing
(January 1968)

The First Widely-Attended International Exhibition of Computer Art
(August 2 – October 20, 1968)

A Sensor for Recording Images
(1969)

CT
(1971)

The First Patent for MRI
(March 17, 1972)

One of the Most Widely Distributed Photographic Images: The Blue Marble Photograph of the Earth
(December 7, 1972)

The Beginnings of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(1973)

The First Whole-Body CT Scanner
(1973)

The First Omni-Font Optical Character Recognition System
(1974)

Invention of the Digital Camera
(December 1975)

The First Commercially Available Laser Printer
(1976)

First Print-to-Speech Reading Machine
(1976)

Making MRI Feasible
(1977)

Early Interactive Computing and Virtual Reality
(1978 – 1979)

Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)
(1981)

The First Commercial Electronic Camera--Not Digital
(August 1981 – 1997)

The First Scanner?
(November 1982)

Among the Earliest Practical Digital Libraries
(1985)

The First Map of the Functioning Structure of an Entire Brain
(November 12, 1986)

The First Digital Image Database of Cultural Materials
(1987)

Origins of Adobe Photoshop
(1987 – February 1990)

The National Center for Biotechnology Information is Founded
(November 4, 1988)

The First Holographic Video Display
(1989)

The First Image Posted to the Web
(1992)

First Library of Digital Images on the Internet
(1993)

The Electronic Beowulf
(1993)

The Mosaic Web Browser
(March 4, 1993)

The First Digital Offset Press
(July 1993)

FishCam: The Oldest Nearly Continuously Operational Webcam
(1994)

First Consumer-Priced Digital Camera
(February 17, 1994)

The First Full-Time Online Webcam Girl
(April 1996 – 2003)

The JPEG 2000 Standard for Still Images
(March 17, 1997)

The Digital Michelangelo Project
(1998)

Origins of Google Earth and Google Maps
(2001)

The World's Largest Book --Spectacularly Beautiful
(December 2003)

Flickr
(February 2004)

Image Manipulation in Scientific Publications
(July 6, 2004)

Google Earth is Launched
(2005)

Connectomes
(September 30, 2005)

Pixar at MOMA
(December 14, 2005)

Disney Acquires Pixar
(January 24, 2006)

92% of Cameras Sold are Digital
(February 2006)

YouWitnessNews
(December 5, 2006)

Photosynth Demonstrated
(March 2007)

Google Introduces Street View in Google Maps
(May 25, 2007 – May 12, 2008)

Brainbow: A Colorful Technique to Visualize Brain Circuitry
(November 2007)

Viewing the Illustrations of a Journal Article in Three Dimensions
(September 30, 2008)

First Images of Extra-Solar Planets Taken from the Visible Spectrum: Planets Located 130 Light-Years from Earth
(November 13, 2008)

Google Earth Incorporates Historical Imagery
(February 2, 2009)

The Human Connectome Project
(July 2009)

Imaging a Molecule One Million Times Smaller Than a Grain of Sand
(August 28, 2009)

David Hockney's iPhone Art
(October 22, 2009)

Introduction of Google Goggles
(December 8, 2009)

The Vatican Library Plans the Scanning of all its Manuscripts into the FITS Document Format
(March 24, 2010)

Google Acknowledges that it Collected Wi-Fi Information Along with Cartographic and Imaging Information
(April 27 – June 10, 2010)

Google Introduces Translation Feature for Google Goggles
(May 6, 2010)

"The First Image of the Entire Universe"
(July 5, 2010)

NCBI Introduces Images, a Database of More than 2.5 Million Images in Biomedical Literature
(October 2010)

Instagram is Founded
(October 2010 – December 17, 2012)

The First MRI Video of Childbirth
(November 2010 – June 2012)

Google Earth 6: Enhanced 3D, 3D Trees, Enhanced Historical Imagery
(November 30, 2010)

The Google Earth Engine
(December 2, 2010)

Scanning Books in Libraries Instead of Making Photocopies
(2011)

Probably the Largest Digital Image
(January 13, 2011)

The Google Art Project
(February 1, 2011)

The Largest Interior Image: The Strahov Monastery Library
(March 29, 2011)

Google Introduces the Knowledge Graph
(May 16, 2012)

A 3D Virtual Reality Reader for eBooks
(October 2012)

After Cell Phones With Cameras, Android Cameras- Without Cellphones- are Introduced
(December 19, 2012)

Making the iPhone 5 Look and Feel Like a Traditional Camera: the gizmon iCa case
(February 2013)