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SPACE ODYSSEYS: sensation & immersion

Timeline

1500 - 1600 - 1700 - 1800 - 1850 - 1900 - 1910 - 1920 - 1930 - 1940 - 1950 - 1960 - 1970 - 1980 - 1990 - 1995 - 2000

c. 1435
Leon Battista Alberti establishes rules of central perspective from optical laws governing the camera obscura
1550
Giuilio Camilla devises first memory theatre
1553
Giovanni Battista della Porta describes use of camera obscura as drawing aid
c. 1600
First telescope
c. 1645
Invention of magic lantern, first projection device and forerunner of modern slide and motion picture projectors
1787
Robert Barker patents the Panorama, the first mass medium
1791
Jeremy Bentham devises groundplan of Panopticon prison

1800
J.M. Jacquard uses punched cards to control weaving loom
1810
Goethe’s theory of Colour
1814
The first general use of gas street lighting in London
1816
Niépce brothers initiate experiments to obtain images using light-sensitive substances
David Brewster invents the kaleidoscope
1818
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
1822
Louis Daguerre’s The Diorama opens in Paris
1823
Charles Babbage develops Difference Engine, machine for computing mathematical tables
1824
Peter Roget describes persistence of vision, the phenomenon upon which cinematography is based
1832
Charles Wheatstone invents stereoscope, optical instrument that creates illusion of three-dimensional image
1833
Charles Babbage proposes Analytical Engine, precursor to the modern digital computer
1837
Electric telegraph patented
1838
First transatlantic crossing by steam ship
1839
Invention of photography: announcement of Louis Daguerre’s process; William Fox Talbot’s first public display of photographs
1841
William Henry Fox Talbot patents the Calotype negative process that allows multiple prints
1844
Samuel Morse develops Morse code
1849
Armand Fizeau calculates speed of light as 300,000 km/s

1856
Photolithography and carbon printing developed
1858
Nadar takes first photographs from a balloon
1860
The age of plastics begin: Alexander Parkes produces celluloid
1861-1864
U.S Civil War: first war to be captured to a large extent through photography
1869
Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
1872
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass
First electrical street car, New York
1875
Typewriter invented
1876
Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone
1878
Eadweard Muybridge captures discrete sequential motion on film
1879
Beginning of the age of electric light: Thomas Edison invents first commercially practical incandescent lamp
1882
E.J. Marey develops chronophotography, literally "photography of time"
1884
Establishment of Greenwich Standard Time
1888
Heinrich Hertz discovers radio waves
1892
Monet begins series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral
1895
Birth of cinema: projection of first moving picture by Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis
Wilhelm Roentgen discovers x-rays
Guglielmo Marconi pioneers wireless telegraphy
Antoine Becquerel discovers radioactivity
H.G. Wells The Time Machine
1896
Henri Bergson Matière et mémoire [Matter and Memory]
1899
George Méliès introduces dissolves, time-lapse photography and artificial lighting into his films
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

1900
Max Planck, Quantum theory
Kodak mass markets 'The Brownie', the first popular lightweight camera
Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams
Paris Métro opens
1902
George Mélies Le Voyage Dans La Lune [A Trip to the Moon]
1903
First flight, Wright Brothers
1905
Albert Einstein, Special Theory of Relativity
1907
Leo H. Baekeland develops first completely synthetic plastic, marketed as Bakelite
1909
Declaration of the Futurist Manifesto in Le Figaro by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

1911
International Conference on Time (Paris) provides uniform method of determining and maintaining accurate time signals
1913
Armory Show, New York
1914
World War I begins
1916
Sonar developed
Piet Mondrian’s first plus and minus paintings
1917
De Stijl founded
1918
World War I ends
Guillaume Apollinaire publishes Caligramme ‘words in space’
Brancusi’s first endless column
1919
First dial telephones
Bauhaus (Weimar) founded
El Lissitsky paints his first 'Prouns' (from the Russian for "Project for the Affirmation of the New")

1920
Max Wolf demonstrates structure of Milky Way through photography
Vladmir Tatlin Monument to the Third International
1922
James Joyce Ulysses
First 3D movie
1923
First wire photo transmission
Charles F. Jenkins in the US and John L. Baird in England develop experimental television systems
Le Corbusier Towards a New Architecture
1924
First round-the-world air flights
André Breton First Surrealist Manifesto
Photographs first transmitted across the Atlantic by wireless technology
1925
Le Corbusier, Citrohan House, ‘machine for living’
First wide-screen film, France
First traffic light installed in London
1926
Fritz Lang Metropolis
First public demonstration of television
First rocket-powered guided missiles
1927
The Jazz Singer, first full-length talking picture
Charles Lindbergh’s first trans-Atlantic flight
Wyndham Lewis Time and Man
Heideigger Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]
1928
First 16mm colour film
Rodchenko proclaims "Art has no place in modern life"
1929
László Moholy-Nagy Von Material zu Architektur [The New Vision: From Material to Architecture]
Dziga Vertov The Man with a Movie Camera
First transmission of colour television signals
Museum of Modern Art opens, New York
Stock Market Crash

1930
László Moholy-NagySpace-Light Modulator exhibited in Paris
Edgard Varèse composes Ionisation for 13 Percussionists
1931
Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Empire State Building, New York
Salvador Dalí The Persistence of Memory
1932
Atom split
Alberto Giacometti The Palace at 4 am
Alexander Calder's first mobiles
Stereophonic sound in a motion picture
First freeway between Cologne and Bonn
1935
Hammond organ introduced
IBM introduces electric typewriter
Radar developed
First television broadcasting service, Germany
1936
Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Alan Turing proposes hypothetical Turing Machine, basis for modern digital computers
1939
World War II begins

1940
Lascaux Caves discovered
1941
First commercial broadcast of television in USA
1942
Magnetic tape developed
1943
Maya Deren Meshes of the Afternoon
Jacques Cousteau develops aqualung
1945
Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
World War II ends
Arthur C. Clarke proposes geosynchronous satellite
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception
1946
ENIAC, first electronic, large-scale, general-purpose computer
1947
Jackson Pollock’s first all-over drip paintings
Clifford Still exhibits first colour-field paintings
Dennis Gabor describes principles of holography
First supersonic flight: Chuck Yeager breaks sound barrier
1948
Edwin Land invents Polaroid camera
LP record invented
Transistors invented
1949
Jean Cocteau Orphée

1951
First (experimental) nuclear reactor, USA
Robert Rauschenberg White Painting
Pierre Boulez composes Polyphonie X
1952
Pocket sized transistor radios introduced in Japan
1953
John Cage presents 4' 33" (4 minutes, 33 seconds of 'silence')
Roland Barthes Degré zéro de L’écriture [Writing Degree Zero]
Double-helix structure of DNA discovered
1954
First public display of Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome
1955
Invention of fibre optics revolutionises world of communications
Stockhausen composes Gesang der Jünglinge
1956
Morton Heilig invents the Sensorama: an immersive 'reality machine'
First transatlantic television service
Television introduced to Australia
1957
Space age begins with launch of Sputnik satellite
Sputnik 2 carries first dog into space
Jack Kerouac On the Road
Gaston Bachelard La poétique de l’espace [The poetics of space]
1958
Advance Research Projects Agency (APRA) formed within US Department of Defense
Allan Kaprow creates first 'Happening'
First stereo records
NASA established
Texas Instruments invents silicon chip
Colour videotape
Mies van der Rohe Seagram Building, New York
1959
Xerox introduces first commercial copy machine
USSR Luna 2 reaches moon
Luna 3 records images of moon and transmits them to earth

1960
Boeing Corporation coins term "computer graphics"
Laser light introduced, enabling transmission of holographic images
High-speed film introduced by Polaroid
Ornette Coleman records Free Jazz
1961
Philips Compact Cassette
USSR first manned space flight: cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, first human in space
First industrial robot
Alain Renais Last Year at Marinbad
1962
Berlin Wall erected
First transatlantic TV broadcast by satellite
Quasars discovered
Tom Kilburn develops Virtual Memory
Luis Buñuel El ángel exterminador [The Exterminating Angel]
1963
Duchamp first retrospective at Pasadena Art Museum
Dan Flavin begins working with standard fluorescent tubes
Buckminster Fuller Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
Andy Warhol Empire (duration 8 hours), Sleep (duration 6 hours)
Kodak introduces Instamatic camera
1964
Op art
John Coltrane records A Love Supreme
Ranger VII transmits close-up photographs of moon’s surface
Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man
Nam June Paik TV Cross
Robert Moog and Herbert Deutsch invent first music synthesiser
1965
Beginnings of video art
Lost in Space (TV series) begins
Jean-Luc Godard Alphaville
1966
Kodak introduces carousel projector
Star Trek (TV series) begins
Robert Morris Notes on Sculpture
Robert Smithson Entrophy and the new monuments
1967
Guy Debord La société du spectacle [Society of the Spectacle]
Marshall McLuhan The Medium is the Message
Pulsars discovered
1968
Earth photographed from moon
Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey
Marvin Minsky develops tentacle arm, a computer controlled arm
Cybernetics Serendipity ICA London
1969
Michelangelo Antonioni Zabriskie Point
ARPANET begins research into networking
US astronaut Neil Armstrong, first human to walk on moon

1970
First jumbo jet
First mobile robot controlled by Artificial Intelligence
Bruce Nauman Live-Taped Video Corridor
Gene Youngblood Expanded Cinema
Information (exhibition) Museum of Modern Art
1971
People communicate over networks; e-mail invented
Nicolas Roeg Walkabout
1972
Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty
Sony produces Port-a-Pak portable video recorder
Magnavox develop the first home video game machine, Odyssey
1973
Ceasefire, Vietnam War
First international connections to the Internet
Lucy Lippard Six Years: The dematerialisation of the art object
1974
USSR Space probe lands on Mars
US Mariner transmits detailed pictures of Venus and Mercury
James Turrell begins Roden Crater Project
1975
First commercial supersonic flight with Concorde aircraft
Paul Allen and Bill Gates found Microsoft
Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
1976
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer
Nicholas Roeg The Man Who Fell to Earth
1977
First manned flight of US space shuttle
USA tests neutron bomb
George Lucas Star Wars
1978
Kraftwerk The Man-Machine
Brian Eno Music for Airports
Robert Morris The Present Tense of Space
1979
Sony Walkman

1980
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari Mille Plateaux [A thousand plateaus]
1981
Tom Furness developed 'virtual cockpit'
IBM launches first PC
George Miller Mad Max
1982
Sony digital camera
Compact Disc (CD) invented
Laurie Anderson Big Science
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf develop TCP/IP protocols for Internet communication
Ridley Scott Bladerunner
Thomas Zimmerman patents data input glove
1983
Myron Krueger Artificial Reality
1984
Apple Macintosh computer released, featuring new and revolutionary user interface
William Gibson coins term "cyberspace" in his novel Neuromancer
Jean-François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge [English translation]
Nam June Paik Good Morning Mr Orwell: Art and Satellites
Sherry Turkle The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
Paul Virilio Guerre et cinéma [War and Cinema: the logistics of perception]
Discovery of hole in ozone layer, Antarctica
1986
USA Challenger Space Shuttle explodes in space
Major nuclear accident, Chernobyl, USSR
Mikhail Gorbachev first uses term "glasnost"
Bill Viola I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like
1987
James Gleick Chaos: the making of a new science
Commercialisation of Internet
1988
Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput Les Immatériaux, Centre George-Pompidou
Definite evidence of Greenhouse effect
1989
Jaron Lanier coins term "virtual reality"
Berlin Wall dismantled
Demonstrations at Tiananmen Square show power of media to inform the world

1990
Re-unification of Germany
1991
Sony Discman
Operation Desert Storm, Persian Gulf War: CNN dominates news coverage worldwide
James Cameron Terminator 2
Donna Haraway A Cyborg Manifesto
Brenda Laurel Computers as Theatre
Myron W. Kruger Artificial Reality II
World Wide Web launched
1992
Gary Hill Tall Ships
Release of Mosaic, first visual web browser software
1993
Chantal Akerman D’est

1995
Char Davies Osmose
Elizabeth Grosz Space, Time and Perversion
John Lasseter Toy Story
1997
Funeral of Diana Princess of Wales broadcast live, worldwide
David Lynch Lost Highway
1998
The Apple iMac is released, becomes fastest selling PC in history
1999
Build-up of fear around 'Y2K'
2000
Sony introduces Playstation 2
Concorde crashes near Paris, becoming world’s unsafest aircraft
2001
'Reality TV' explodes across the Western World