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Author Topic: Master Timeline  (Read 57947 times)

Ric Gillespie

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Master Timeline
« on: February 27, 2016, 08:28:25 AM »

Forum research for the Electra book has been fantastic but the wealth of information we've uncovered and documented is scattered all over the place.  "Topic-creep" is inevitable and we all tend to color outside the lines. We lose track of what we've learned and we forget where we put stuff.  We need a Master Timeline that tracks the airplane and the major players literally day-to-day from the aircraft's inception to it's disappearance.  The timeline will, of course, need to include sources (official documents, letters, newspaper articles, photos, original photo captions, etc.).  Everyone working on this project will need to have access to the Master Timeline and be able to offer updates, corrections, and additions.  I'm not sure what format or medium is best to accomplish this but a Master Timeline is essential for designing and writing the book.
Suggestions?
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Bill Mangus

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2016, 09:01:40 AM »

I was just thinking about this last night.

Perhaps some kind of Calendar utility program where each day can be opened and events, photos, etc. could be added by interested parties.  Click on the day and you get to see, in chronological order the what, where and when for that day.  Maybe a diary format where each day can be opened.

It would be hard to keep multiple entries on the same event from appearing in the same day so someone would have to review the entries before they get pasted permanently to the 'day' block.  Guess that means you Ric :)

Another option would be just a straight line graph divided into days.  Click on the day and you see the what, where and when etc.  It might be easier to track from a linear standpoint but would take more room in any kind of forum display.  If I would do it without a computer I'd tack up long strips of butcher paper on a corkboard wall, mark off the days and start tacking stuff up, sort of like a storyboard for a film.  The advantage to this, to me anyway, is that you get to see the whole thing at a glance, then decide what you want to zoom-in on to study or modify.  Somehow I don't see Pat letting you run butcher paper throughout the house ;D  Maybe someone knows of a program like that.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 09:23:26 AM by Bill Mangus »
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Bruce Thomas

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2016, 09:35:46 AM »

I'd go looking for a useful software product for timelines. Key to such a search is to know exactly how your requirements for collecting and displaying historical information differ from the requirements of other applications (such as project management, Gantt charts, genealogy, etc.).

Some software will be marketed as one-stop products that can do it all -- I'd beware of these. Your needs are different from (although related to) those of an author of a book on royal genealogy, and quite different from those of a project manager laying out a construction project for a hands-on customer like a certain real-estate mogul in the national news these days. Other timeline software seems to be tailored to being integrated with specific publishing products (like PowerPoint) -- I'd beware of these, since such coupling can box you into a combination that lacks versatility in meeting your needs.

After entering in "timeline software" into the dialog box for a search engine, the various suggestions of other search terms to flesh out your search can be quite enlightening and helpful. I won't name the products in this post, but when I did such a search this morning, out popped quite a list of products -- some freeware, and some with a pricetag.

Delving into the marketing/sales literature for a set of likely products can assist in your coming up with what the actual requirements are for your specific application. After compiling such a list of your requirements (with some metric as to how important each requirement is), and ranking these for a list of potential software products, it should be a straight-forward task of homing in on a product that best suits your needs.

Certain requirements come to my mind: ease of entering textual info, graphical info, and links to online resources, and scanning of source documents, along with ways to tag each entry with relevant dates and subjects -- exact dates or approximate timespan or yet-unknown; finding heretofore unrecognized ties between various items entered via the subject tags; display of a timeline in a variety of formats -- from a text-oriented summary that aids in refining the placement of items with yet-unknown positions in time, up to a rich variety of final timeline forms that lead to visually compelling output for final publication.

Certainly there should be publishers of historical books and periodicals who can suggest candidate tools to you, or hook you up with authors who have already been down that road.
LTM,

Bruce
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Brian Tannahill

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2016, 09:43:37 PM »

I suggest using Excel, unless or until you reach a point where Excel is inadequate. 

Here's a possible setup: an Excel workbook with a sheet for each person or item being tracked.  The first tab could be for the Electra, another for Amelia, one for Paul Mantz, for George Putnam, etc. 

Each column is a day.  So the sheet for the Electra would have a column for August 2, 1936, and you would note there that on that day Earhart and McLeod flew to Mills Field.  The column for August 18 would show that the Bureau of Air Commerce issued the aircraft a license as R16020.

The sheets for Earhart, Bo McNeely, and everyone else would contain all that you know about their whereabouts and activities each day, along with photos, maps, and links.

Excel can store text, graphics, and hyperlinks.  You can also link to another location in the workbook. 

One big advantage of using Excel:  you can start today.  (I'm presuming TIGHAR has a copy of MS Office.)  You don't need to evaluate, purchase, and install specialty software to get started.

If you use Excel and eventually decide that you need some functionality that Excel doesn't have, you'll be in a better position to choose a product.  You'll know exactly what you need to do that Excel won't do, and you can evaluate products with that in mind.





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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2016, 10:06:34 PM »

I'd go looking for a useful software product for timelines.


I played around with Timeline back in 2012.


I don't have a working demo from what I was working on then.

LTM,

           Marty
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Steve Lyle Gunderson

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2016, 11:12:09 PM »

I agree with Brian on the use of EXCEL. I have also used the GOOGLE clone in tandem on line with great success (free use too). The spreadsheets are interchangeable between EXCEL & GOOGLE and the GOOGLE version is on-line and can be controlled for access by email address for 'read only' or 'Edit' functions. I have setup a basic project timeline on GOOGLE, allowed supervisors to update status and done a COPY / PASTE (save as) to my personal master schedule in EXCEL on my PC where I can make corrections, edit and update and then, when appropriate, upload back to a MASTER GOOGLE sheet so that it is 'read only' and visible to those I have given access.
That would give you the ability to allow people of your choosing to provide the information independent of the FORUM and the security to preserve the integrity of your manuscript.
Steve G
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #6 on: February 28, 2016, 05:11:24 AM »

I agree with Brian on the use of EXCEL. I have also used the GOOGLE clone in tandem on line with great success (free use too).


Yes, spreadsheets are very powerful.


They are great at sorting by date and time.


Large blobs of text can be held in them.


If you use a spreadsheet and force yourself to be consistent in categorizing data by using new fields, what is in the spreadsheet can be parsed and translated into any other kind of database.


And it is familiar "technology."  No need to climb the whole learning curve of a different database system.


"How to make a timeline in Excel."



LTM,

           Marty
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #7 on: February 28, 2016, 07:19:04 AM »

A spreadsheet does seem to be the way to go.  We're presently working up a prototype.  We'll test fly it here (with an "X" registration number) when we have something that looks ready to fly.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2016, 01:15:57 PM »

Here's a first cut at how the MASTER TIMELINE spreadsheet will look. 
• There will be a row for each day starting on July 19 1936 - the day the airplane was first inspected by the Bureau of Air Commerce - and ending on July 2, 1937 - the day the airplane disappeared.
•  There will be three sheets. One for the airplane structure, one for the radios, and one for Earhart.
•  For each day and each sheet there will be a field for:
-  Location
-  Event (this will be a brief notation that is a link to a full description of the event in Word)
-  Photo (links to a photo or photos that show the airplane on that day)
- Document (links to documents, letters, or newspaper clippings relative to that day)
- By (the initials of the person who made the entry)
- Date (the day the entry was made or amended)
- Remarks (for example: photo credits or researcher acknowledgement)

The event descriptions, photos and documents have to be somewhere we can link to, so they will be archived on the TIGHAR website.  Links to newspaper clippings will go directly to the on-line source if the on-line archive seems to be durable.

We're not yet sure where and how the spreadsheet will be stored.  We'd like it to be viewable by everyone so that any TIGHAR member who is registered to post to the Forum can do needed research and post suggested additions or changes to the spreadsheet. To avoid chaos, only a few selected researchers will have the ability to make changes and additions to the spreadsheet.

Thoughts?  Recommendations?

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Doug Giese

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2016, 01:29:56 PM »

There should be enough time allowed for radio transmissions and other known events, connected to the flight, after the flight went down.
------
Doug
 
« Last Edit: March 02, 2016, 01:42:05 PM by Doug Giese »
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2016, 01:53:12 PM »

There should be enough time allowed for radio transmissions and other known events, connected to the flight, after the flight went down.

Different subject.  This is a mechanism for organizing research for the new TIGHAR book "Finding Amelia - The True Story of the Earhart Electra."

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Monty Fowler

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #11 on: March 02, 2016, 02:33:53 PM »

I'm not an expert (some of the people I worked with are), but I believe Google Drive has the functionality you're looking for, as regards to being able to share with only certain people, and to allow only certain people to make changes.

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC
Ex-TIGHAR member No. 2189 E C R SP, 1998-2016
 
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2016, 02:50:07 PM »

Thoughts?  Recommendations?


The date/time data is critical.


It must be reduced to the same format so that you can pull the information from all three
worksheets into a common timeline.


Pick a style, any style, and be very rigid in forcing all date/time information to fit the style.  Then you can convert to any other time/date system you want relatively easily.


Every entry in the spreadsheets should have date/time information, even if 10 or 20 lines all have the same date and time.  You are entering the data so that a totally obedient moron (TOM, a.k.a. "a computer") can extract the information and display it in its proper chronological sequence.  We can see that everything is from the same day by reading headlines or seeing things in bold, but the computer cannot.  Each piece of information has to be individually marked so that it gets slotted into its proper place on the timelines that you construct from the spreadsheets.

LTM,

           Marty
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Diane James

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2016, 02:54:31 PM »

Different subject.  This is a mechanism for organizing research for the new TIGHAR book "Finding Amelia - The True Story of the Earhart Electra."

The book is certainly a highly worthy first priority. I hope by working the bugs out of it for the book there will eventually come time and effort available to expand it to include the entire Fred and Amelia project.
Diane
Diane James
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Master Timeline
« Reply #14 on: March 02, 2016, 03:46:17 PM »

Pick a style, any style, and be very rigid in forcing all date/time information to fit the style.  Then you can convert to any other time/date system you want relatively easily.

Okay.  Got that.  In most cases we'll have date information.  In some cases we'll only have a range of dates (for example: this piece of equipment was installed some time between this date and that date).  Time of day information is largely unavailable or irrelevant.  We don't really need to know whether Earhart gave her talk at a luncheon or a dinner.

Every entry in the spreadsheets should have date/time information, even if 10 or 20 lines all have the same date and time.
... Each piece of information has to be individually marked so that it gets slotted into its proper place on the timelines that you construct from the spreadsheets.

Maybe I'm missing something but I've been thinking that the spreadsheet IS the timeline.  In writing the book I plan to use it my primary guide to:
- what was done
- when it was done
- and, if possible, why it was done

I'm hoping that by tracking Earhart's movements during the year, in parallel to the evolution of the airplane, we'll get a better feel for how much of her time was devoted to planning, preparing, and training for the world flight versus time spent in other activities (lecture tours, press events, political events, etc.). As far as I know, nobody has ever looked at the last year of Earhart's life from this perspective. 


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