After using TimeMapper to document major world events of the 1860s, I have seen how chronology of events contributes to linear and non-linear time. It is a user-friendly tool that allows one to fill out the form of the even he or she wants to create. It is then documented in a google doc and is placed into the timeline. We used this tool to see what events were happening in the 1860s that could relate to James Merrill Linn in the winter of 1862.
One very interesting fact that Grafton brings up is that Chart of Biography, published in 1765, was revolutionary in that itintroduced chart that is recognizable to most of us today. This chart was a a series of horizontal lines indicating when and how long famous figures lived. Priestly’s chart was one of the first non-linear time maps. Our TimeMapper experiment was a new rendition of this simple concept. It shows how two unrelated events, such as: Florence Nightingale’s first nursing school and James Merrill Linn enlisting in the war, really do have a relationship. Clearly, if this was only the first nursing school, the medical health system was lacking. This definitely must have had an effect on Linn and his fellow troops.
Grafton brings up the point that technological advancements, such as photography, had an impact on documenting history. In our TimeMapper assignment, every one of the events of the 1860’s had a photo and geographical coordinates. These ammedities make it easier to relate the historical events to Linn’s situation.
On figure 14 in the reading, Grafton references “The Long Now Foundation, comparative time scales of the concept of long.” Linn, in the winter of 1862, is documenting the “now.” When we used TimeMapper, we were documenting the “nowadays.” Linn’s writing focuses on yesterday, today, tomorrow, while our research this past week focuses on more on an entire decade. Why would Linn reference the publication of Les Miserables? He is writing with a different concept of time. He is living in the “now.”