SPDX-License-Identifier: CC0-1.0

13.8 Ga - Big bang / Age of the Universe
Big bang + 300 kya - Cosmic microwave background (CMB) source
4.5 Ga - Earth Forms
4.5 - 4.0 Ga - Hadean geologic eon
4.3 - 3.6 Ga - last universal common ancestor (LUCA)
4.0 - 2.5 Ga - Archean geologic eon
3.7 Ga - First fossil life
3.5 Ga - Photosynthesis
2.4 Ga - First atmospheric oxygen on Earth
350 mya - oldest sea floor - Mediterranean
200 mya - oldest sea floor outside of the Mediterranean - Northwest Pacific
Jurassic quiet zone
Cretaceous quiet zone - C34n
KT Boundary
0.780 mya Brunhes–Matuyama reversal - List of geomagnetic reversals
Plumb bob used in ancient Egypt
206 BC - Compass invented - Not used for navigation until the 11th century.
~140 BC - Hipparchus - developed trigonometry and some spherical trigonometry
100-200 BC - Antikythera mechanism - first analog computer
46 BC - Julian Calendar proposed
0 - Common Era (CE) start / Anno Domini (AD) start
106 CE - Paper making process
347 CE - Earliest known oil well
1490 - Leonardo da Vinci detecting ships by underwater sound
1551 - Plane table earliest mention
1562 - Submarine - Two Greeks submerged and surfaced
1569 - Mercator projection
1576 - Theodolite first built
1582 - Gregorian calendar went into effect. Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15 October 1582
1620 - Gunter's chain for distance measuring
1656 - Pendulum clock
1676 - Rømer's determination of the speed of light
1699 - Newton’s reflecting quadrant
1724 - Fahrenheit temperature scale proposed
1731 - Sextant first implemented
1732 - encoding of data by discrete bits
1742 - Celsius proposed
1761 - H4 marine chronometer
1776 - Photogrammetry started about here
1785 - Galactic coordinate system first version
1791 - Start of Principal Triangulation of Great Britain ended in 1853
1797 - Alexander von Humboldt attributed rock magnetization to lightning strikes
1807 - US funds U.S. coastal survey that later became NOAA
1826 - First permanent photograph of a camera image
1830 - Airy ellipsoid
1833 - Buttermilk: The Oldest Surviving Survey Mark in the US.
1843 - Note G by Ada Lovelace
1854 - John Snow maps Cholera in London
1854 - The Laws of Thought by George Boole
1855 - Gall stereographic projection
1858 - aerial photography from a balloon by Nadir - first remote sensing
1859 - Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species
1861 - Clarke ellipsoid
1866 - Dynamite invented
1875 - General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) started
1879 - United States Geological Survey (USGS) formed
1884 - International Meridian Conference
1890 - Peano curve - first example of a space filling curve
1891 - Hilbert curve
1894 - Brunton compass patented
1902 - Atlas Elekctonik founded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Elektronik
1903 - General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) started
1904 - Radar the beginnings of detecting remote metal objects
1907 - Radiometric dating first published
1911 - Discovery of superconductivity
1911 - Uranium-Lead dating paper by A. Holmes
1912 - Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift
1912 - Sinking of the RMS Titanic
1913 - Sonar first echo sounder patent
1914 - International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS)
1915 - General relativity published by Einstein
1917 - Nautical time standard developed
1918 - Shapley - globular clusters distribution leading to the latest galactic coordinate system
1927 - North American Datum of 1927 (NAD27)
1928 - Universal Time (UT)
1928 - Hydrographic Manual by J.H. Hawley
1929 - Breakage of submarine cables by a turbidity current
1930s - Siemens star / spoke target developed
1931 - Simrad founded. Became the start of Kongsberg Maritime
1934 - American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) founded
1936 - Turing machine
1940s - Development of radiocarbon dating
1940 - Gee radio navigation system
1940 - Project 3 hyperbolic radio navigation system - predecessor to Loran
1941 - Z3_(computer)
1942 - Decca radio navigation system.
1942 - First INS https://www.ion.org/publications/abstract.cfm?articleID=100716
1942 - LORAN hyperbolic radio navigation system
1942 - Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system first appears
1945 - Trinity (nuclear test) - first detonation of a nuclear weapon
1945 - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
1948 - A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude E. Shannon
1949 - Atomic clock - ammonia clock
1951 - Synthetic-aperture radar idea created
1951 - UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) - First commercially computer
1952 - Marie Tharp map of the sea floor
1954 - International System of Units (SI) started
1954 - Kelvin added to SI
1955 - Cesium atomic clock for time standards Atomichron
1956 - P.M.S. Blackett invented a sensitive astatic magnetometer
1957 - Tellurometer - the first successful microwave distance measurement
1957 - Sputnik 1 - First satellite
1957 - Fortran first appeared
1957 - First physiographic map of an ocean
1958 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter
1959 - Corona / Keyhole satellites start
1959 - Vanguard 2 first experimental weather satellite
1959 - Bézier curve in computer graphics
1960 - Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) starts
1960 - Laser first built
1960 - Valdivia earthquake - Largest recorded earthquake at 9.4 - 9.6 moment magnitude
1960 - TIROS-1 first full-scale weather satellite
1960/2 - Plate tectonics / Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis
1961 - Lidar first system
1962 - Patent US3144631A filed - Radiation mapping system - multibeam sonar
1962 - Bob Nathan proposed image processing lab (IPL) at JPL
1962 - Geology in the Field by Bob Compton first published
1963 - Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS) - first GIS. Year from here
1964 - Ranger program to the moon gets first images with Ranger 7
1965 - Fred Billingsley wrote the word pixel
1965 - Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis founded.
1966 - Video Image Communication And Retrieval (VICAR) at JPL VICAR_guide_5.0.pdf
1967 - Experimental Cartography Unit at Royal College of Arts, London
1968 - Mother of All Demos by Doug Engelbart
1969 - CHAYKA Russian hyperbolic radio navigation system similar to LORAN
1969 - Charge-coupled device (CCD) imager invented
1969 - Design with Nature Ian McHarg first edition
1969 - ESRI founded
1969 - RFC 1 for the Internet - List of RFCs
1970 - Unix time of 0
1970 - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) formed
1970 - ISO 3166 numeric country codes
1971 - Intel 4004 - First commercially available microprocessor
1972 - Landsat 1 launched - unofficially the beginning of the Earth Observing (EO) era
1972 - C (programming language) first appeared
1972 - Apollo 17 - last time people were on the moon; Jack Schmitt was first geologist on the moon
1973 - Unix first release
1973 - USGS Geographic Information Retrieval and Analysis System (GIRAS)
1973 - Source Code Control System (SCCS) initial release
1973 - air traffic control radar beacon system (ATCRBS) ??? or was this 1961?
1974 - Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
1974 - LORAN C opened to civilian use
1974 - Quad tree invented
1974 - Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)
1975 - Cray-1 super computer
1976 - Hydrographic Manual, 4th edition
1977 - Multibeam_echosounder - SeaBeam classic is the first commercial multibeam. 1st generation deep sea multibeam
1977 - Interactive Data Language (IDL)
1977 - First map of the entire ocean floor
1977 - Parsons and Sclater - ocean floor bathymetry and heat flow with age
1978 - Global Positioning System (GPS) first satellite launched
1978 - TIN, T. K. Peucker, R. J. Fowler, J. J. Little, and D. M. Mark. The triangulated irregular network. In Proc. of the Digital Terrain Models Symp., pages 516-532, St. Louis, MO, 1978. [pdf]
1978 - TMS5100 first DSP chip - Speak and Spell
1978 - Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) first release
1979 - CARIS formed from University of New Brunswick - Computer Aided Resource Information System
1979 - Map Overlay and Statistical System
1979 - Get this book in print▼ Topological Principles in Cartography by James Corbett
1979 - Earth Resources Data Analysis System (ERDAS)
1979 - MATLAB first released
1979 - Network Time Protocol (NTP)
1980 - Geodetic Reference System 1980 (GRS80)
1980 - General Cartographic Transformation Package (GCTP) by John P. Snyder and Atef Elassal
1981 - Silicon Graphics founded
1981 - Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) first released
1981 - Random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm published
1982 - PostScript - page description language
1982 - GLONASS Russian GNSS system first launch
1982 - ESRI Arc/Info released
1982 - Revision Control System (RCS) first released
1982 - Spacecraft, Planet, Instrument, C-matrix, Events, - and the SPICE system (SPICE) system created
1982 - United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) signed
1983 - Db2 first release
1983 - Forward and inverse cartographic projection procedures published by Gerald Evenden - the start of PROJ
1984? CHS and Oracle do custom spatial app with the Oracle database
1984 - X Window System
1984 - GRASS GIS Released by the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE)
1984 - NMEA_0183 first released
1984 - WGS84 / Earth Gravitational Model 1984 (EGM84)
1984 - Apple Macintosh initial release
1985 - GEOdetic SATellite (GEOSAT) launched
1985 - Cellular telephone first introduced
1985 - Intergraph IGDS CAD based GIS
1986 - Discovery of high-temperature superconductivity
1986 - Etak - First in car navigation system
1986 Chernobyl disaster
1986 - Start of Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) with paper by Smith and Cheeseman
1986 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapInfo_Pro
1986 - Swedish land Data Bank completed - first national digital cadaster
1986 - NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-S WFC-60, Determining fish movements from an "archival" tag by Smith, P., & Goodman, D. (1986)
1987 - MIT License
1987 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerrSet was IDRISI. Named for Muhammad al-Idrisi
1987 - NASA GCMD Science Keywords started
1988 - NetCDF started
1988 - Generic Mapping Tools (GMT; Gravity, Magnetics, Topography) initial release.
1988 - Integrated Land and Water Information System (ILWIS) first released
1989 - 2nd generation deepsea multibeam (Hydrosweep DS) ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multibeam_echosounder
1989 - Garmin founded as ProNav
1989 - GNU Public License (GPL)
1989 - Receiver Independent Exchange Format (RINEX) for data interchange format for raw satellite navigation system data
1989 - SGI OpenInventor started
1990 - Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) started out of AEHOO (All Encompassing Hierarchical Object Oriented format)
1990 - Scott Fisher Scientific American Virtual Reality publication
1990 - WWW first prototype at CERN
1990 - Concurrent Version System (CVS) initial release
1990 - MS Windows 3.0
1990 - BSD 4-clause license
1990 - Federal Geographic Data Committee formed
1991 - GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
1991 - Sam Leffler starts https://gitlab.com/libtiff/libtiff
1991 - Linux initial release
1991 - Alacarte - First GUI for ESRI’s Arc/Info by the USGS Menlo Park.
1991 - ArcView 1.0 Released by ESRI
1992 - Python (programming language) first appeared
1992 - Shape and Motion from Image Streams paper from Tomasi 10.1007/BF00129684 Structure from motion (SfM)
1992 - OpenGL Initial Release
1992 - new geomagnetic polarity time scale by Cande and Kent
1992 - First exoplanet detection confirmed
1992 - Terralens from Kongsberg Geospatial formerly InterMAPhics
1992 - TOPEX/Poseidon launched
1992 - NOAA Horizontal Time-Dependent Positioning (HTDP) 1.0 released
1993 - Virtual Environments for Vehicle Interfaces (VEVI) at NASA Ames
1993 - Xerox PARC Map Viewer, The first mapserver based on CGI/Perl
1993 - R (programming language) first appeared
1993 - Flash first released in the form of SmartSketch
1993 - MB-System first commit
1993 - Complex event processing (CEP) starts with Rapide project at Stanford University
1993 - EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset made public. Created 1985
1993 - GNU Octave first released - MATLAB like language
1993 - Portable Document Format (PDF) first released
1994 - United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) effective
1994 - Environment for Visualizing Images (ENVI)
1994 - Blender initial release
1994 - Pure File Magic Area-Based Editor (pfmabe) sonar editing tool started by US Navy / NAVO
1994 - Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) founded
1994 - MapServer initial release
1994 - PROJ4 released
1994 - FGDC metadata standard for the US government released
1994 - CMU Dante II goes into Mt Spurr
1995 - Exchangeable image file format (Exif) initial release
1995 - NumPy called “Numeric” at the time
1995 - JavaScript first released
1995 - Secure Shell (ssh) first introduced
1995 - GeoTIFF was published on the internet for the first time
1995 - Perforce founded - predecessor to Google Piper
1996 - Extensible Markup Language (XML) started
1996 - US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) (possibly 1993 by Bill Clinton?)
1996 - Differential GPS (DGPS) - First production quality transmissions. What about Maritime Differential GPS (MDGPS) in the 1980s?
1996 - NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline starts
1996 - EGM96
1996 - MapQuest launched
1996 - Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) initial release
1996 - Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL) project founded
1997 - Kyle-Bingamon Amendment limiting satellite imagery of Israel
1997 - Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML)
1997 - X3D Successor to VRML
1997 - WiFI introduced
1997 - Smith and Sandwell paper Global seafloor topography from satellite altimetry and ship depth soundings, Science
1997 - NOAA Field Procedures Manual first edition
1997 - NASA Ames Viz starts
1997 - OGC Simple features started. WKT for geometry?
1997 - MathWorks MatLab Mapping Toolbox first released
1998 - shapefile specification released
1998 - Google founded
1998 - M.1371-0 first specification of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) for ships
1998 - Yahoo! Maps launched
1998 - Generic Sensor Format (GSF) for sonar - baseline version
1998 - Manifold System released
1999 - libgeotiff first commit
1999 - BlackBerry first released
1999 - GIS Day starts
1999 - MetaCarta founded - 2001 Geographic Text Search
1999 - Keyhole Inc founded
1999 - GeoTools initial release
1999 - Ikonos satellite
1999 - Well-known text representation of coordinate reference systems (WKT)
1999 - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra
2000 - SQLite initial release
2000 - Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) launched with Hyperion imaging spectrometer
2000 - BeiDou first satellite launched
2000 - Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)
2000 - OpenCV initial release
2000 - JTS funded
2000? - Wardriving first done to map out the location of WiFi base stations
2000 - Subversion initial release
2000 - Selective Availability (SA) disabled for GPS - https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/
2000 - GDAL first release
2000 - Geography Markup Language (GML) initial release
2000 - Hydrographic Surveys Specifications and Deliverables (HSSD) from NOAA first released
2000 - Information Visualization: Perception for Design by Colin Ware
2000 - Coin3D OpenInventor clone started
2000 - R Version 1.0.0 released
2001 - SciPy
2001 - SkyTruth founded
2001 - Creative Commons License (CCL) started
2001 - PostGIS Initial Release
2001 - QuickBird launched
2001 - Keyhole Earthviewer 1.0
2001 - Creative Common founded
2001 - IPython initial release
2001 - Mac OSX initial release
2001 - GeoServer initial release
2002 - Geometry Engine, Open Source (GEOS) aka libgeos first commit.
2002 - Undersea with GIS book by Dawn J. Wright
2002 - AIS Mandated for large ships
2002 - Blender released as open source
2002 - QGIS initial release
2002 - GPSBabel initial release
2003 - Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) for GPS first launched
2003 - LAS lidar format initial release
2003 - ISO 19115:2003 Geographic information Metadata
2003 - NASA WorldWind first release
2003 - Tableau Software founded
2003 - EMACS Org mode initial release
2003 - US Commercial Remote Sensing Space Policy signed into law
2003 - rgdal first published on CRAN
2004 - Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami 9.2–9.3 Mw
2004 - Apache License 2.0
2004 - Open Street Map (OSM)
2004 - GeoMapApp 1.1 released - TODO: Bill Haxby and Bill Ryan initial code in the late 90s.
2004 - Google acquires Keyhole Inc.
2004 - Start of cloud computing with Amazon Web Services (AWS)
2004 - Google MapReduce paper
2004 - gvSIG
2004 - GNU Data Language - Interactive Data Language (IDL) 7 compatible
2005 - Submarine USS San Francisco grounds on a sea mount
2005 - git initial release
2005 - Google Maps launched
2005 - Mapping Hacks from O'Reilly books released
2006 - Fall AGU virtual globes session organized by John Bailey
2006 - OpenLayers initial release
2006 - NOAA Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA) started
2006 - Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) founded
2006 - DJI formed to make drones
2006 - VisionWorkbench initial commit
2006 - Committee on the Support for Thinking Spatially (2006), National Academy of Sciences
2007 - First Google Earth release
2007 - Google MyMaps released
2007 - Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE)
2007 - USGS presents the USGS Test Sites Catalog with Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS)
2008 - GeoJSON specification
2008 - KML becomes OGC standard
2008 - SpatiaLite
2008 - EGM2008
2008 - Street View in Google Earth
2008 - Visual Thinking for Design by Colin Ware
2008 - GeoDjango merged into Django
2008 - Open Data Kit (ODK) founded
2008 - INaturalist launched
2008 - GeoEye-1 satellite launch
2009 - WorldView-2 satellite launch
2009 - The KML Handbook by Josie Wernecke published
2009 - CC0 license released
2009 - Silicon Graphics mostly dead
2009 - Rebeccca Moore proposes Earth Engine
2009 - Matt Hancher and Noel Gorelick start Google Earth Engine
2009 - Google Ocean released in Google Earth
2009 - NASA Kepler launched to find extra solar planets
2010 - Three.js initial release
2010 - OpenRefine initial release
2010 - Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010 - Kurt Schwehr released the first version of libais (for DWH spill)
2010 - Planet Labs founded
2010 - Mapbox founded
2010 - Google paints a Siemens Star / spoke target on the roof in Mountain View, CA
2010 - Leaflet first commit
2011 - OpenROV started
2011 - Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami - Fukushima nuclear accident
2011 - Point Data Abstraction Library (PDAL) initial release
2011 - Earth Engine graduates from Google Labs to google.org
2011 - Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP launched
2011 - IPython Notebook first release
2011 - Carto / CartoDB
2011 - Galileo (satellite navigation; GNSS) first launch. 2005 was a test satellite. Operational 2016
2011 - CalTopo founded
2011 - Pleiades 1 satellite launch
2011 - CesiumJS started
2012 - Pleiades 2 satellite launch
2012 - Apple Maps initial release
2012 - Earth Engine moves from Google.org to Google GEO PA
2012 - Earth Engine API starts
2012 - WhaleAlert released / presented to US Congress
2012 - Niantic Field Trip released
2012 - Michael Jones (MTJ) keynote talk - Google Chief Technology Advocate about the future of spatial
2013 - All the Ships - Google I/O talk about Geospatial in Google Cloud
2013 - Earth Engine Timelapse first release
2013-03 - What3Words
2013-06 - maplibre-gl-js first commit (as mapbox-gl-js)
2013-06 - geopandas first commit
2013-08 - xarray first commit
2014 - WorldView-3 satellite launch
2014 - Wolfram Mathematic Geographic Computation: GeoGraphics
2014 - Sentinel 1 first launch
2014-02 - GeoPackage
2014-10 - Open Location Code (OLC) - Google’s “Plus Codes”
2015 - Naval Postgraduate School, King Hall, Monterey, CA put a QR code on the roof
2015-01 - GDAL PSC switches chair to Even Rouault
2015-01 - Dask initial release
2015-02 - Project Jupyter founded
2015-02 - Google suggests Google Maps Engine users switch to ESRI - lost post by Michael T. Jones (mtj)
2015-04 - Apache Sedona first commit
2015-06 - Sentinel 2 first launch
2015-10 - GDAL PSC adds Kurt Schwehr
2015-11 - TensorFlow
2015-12 - Zarr python started
2016 - ROCKD crowd sourced geology app first released
2016-01 - deck.gl started
2016-05 - d3-geo started
2016-05 - Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)
2016-07 - Pokémon Go released
2016-09 - Global Fishing Watch launched
2017 - Earth Engine technical paper published
2017 - STAC Spec first commit
2017 - fieldkit founded
2018 - Earth Engine public data catalog launched
2018-03 - kepler.gl first commit
2018-04 - Google ground first commit
2018-06 - PROJ RFC 1 ratified including Kurt Schwehr on PSC
2018-06 - Earth Engine Apps launch
2018-07 - DuckDB first commit
2018-12 - MovingPandas first commit
2019 - Earth Engine Cloud API alpha launched
2019 - Unfolded founded. 2021-05 bought and renamed to Foursquare Studio
2019-01 - Zarr spec started
2019-05 - GDAL RFC 73: Integration of PROJ6 for WKT2
2020 - Adobe Flash end-of-life (EOL)
2020-03 - geemap first commit
2020-04 - MS Planetary Computer announced
2020-04 - GeoArrow started
2021 - Pleiades Neo satellite launch
2021 - geoparquet spec first commit
2021 - felt.com founded
2021-05 - STAC Spec 1.0.0 released
2021-05 - TorchGeo
2021-10 - GitHub Copilot
2021 - Cloud Optimized Point Cloud (COPC) specification 1.0
2022-06 - Earth Engine github catalog created
2022-06 - Dynamic World launched
2022-06 - Earth Engine GA for commercial use in Google Cloud
2022-11 - ChatGPT first release
2023-06 - Earth Engine github catalog with STAC Jsonnet + checker launched ec323513
2023-10 - Overture Maps first commit - TODO fact check
2024 - Maxar Legion satellites launched
2024-05 - Clay 1.0 large earth foundation model from Made with Clay open source, open data
2024-08 - STAC Spec 1.1.0
2024-08 - STAC GeoParquet
2024-09 - EE Python client version 1.0 launched
2024-10 - IceChunk released
2024-11 - Mapping the ionosphere with millions of phones

License

schwehr/gis-history

ErrorLooks like something went wrong!

About

Resources

License

Uh oh!

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases

Packages 0

Contributors 6

Uh oh!

Error
Looks like something went wrong!

Packages