Memory (1913-1914) by Augustus Lukeman, for the Ida and Isidor Straus Memorial, Straus Park, Manhattan, New York City

1. Building a History Database

By Gene Stavrou
March 2022

Atimeline is just about the simplest device available for presenting historical events over time. It's a list of related milestones organized within a timeframe—a kind of shorthand for communicating history. Image: A simple timeline is a list of related milestones.

A timeline's content can be contained within a simple information structure: one table with each row representing one event, and columns containing event name, description, and date. Image: A simple timeline's information structure. Events are curated to describe a particular aspect of history. A biographical timeline, for example, could include a person's major life events ("hatch, match, dispatch"). A war timeline might list lead-up events, declarations of war, battles and outcomes, and treaty signing. A corporate timeline might include the founder's big idea; the company's formation, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures; leadership changes; product introductions, and other business milestones over time.

Such simple timelines are curated to answer two types of questions: "when did notable events happen?" and "what is the temporal relationship between those events?" They can also be used to make a statement; the company timeline's message is often "you can trust us; we've been around for a while." Adding an aspect or two helps in answering more complex questions. The company aspect paired with a geopolitical or economic aspect, for example, might reveal that the company thrived during wartime or benefitted from housing booms. The message of a war timeline might take on a different tone when paired with information that clarifies the war's human toll over time. Image: Paired timeline aspects can display correlation.

While pairing timelines can display correlation (these two events happened at the same time), a more complex information structure is required to display causality (this event directly affected the outcome of another). History is multifaceted and discovering reasonable causal connections between seemingly disconnected elements is what gets the mind buzzing. Exploring history is an ongoing process of linking nodes via relationships and there is wonder in traversing such a model and adding context and connections as you learn. Discovering a missing piece can be like finding a portal at what was thought to be a dead end.

The Treebase graph database is intended to map history connections and make discovering relationships easier.

Nodes and Edges

Information will be organized into a collection of nodes (or vertices) and edges (relationships). Image: A graph database focuses on nodes and relationships. Nodes can be thought of as nouns in that they represent people, places, things, and ideas. Edges are like verbs, and they connect two nodes by describing their relationship. Storing historical information in this "graph" format makes it available for analysis and for communication through a variety of formats—from the simple timeline to the voice user interface. We'll start by building the database's structure and rules.

Getting Started: Landmarks

Treebase will focus initially on New York City history as a theme for developing the database rules. We'll start by developing and populating the landmark node type, which includes physical features, such as sculpture, shoreline, and streets, as well as notable buildings. Later, these nodes will be connected to other nodes (people, ideas) as well as mapping coordinates, images, and other relationships via edges. Track the ongoing addition of nodes and relationships on the Treebase homepage.

Dakota Apartments, Exterior Railing Detail, 1884