Brief History of Visual Aids

Over time, the use of visual aids to supplement messages has persisted. They are used to recount stories, present new information and strive to change others’ minds. Please help assemble a comprehensive timeline of visual aids through time. Use the form below to suggest an addition to the timeline.

Cave Paintings 15000 BCE The 2,000 images found in the caves at Lascaux, France narrate stories through character, sequence, and motion. The oldest evidence the world has of visual storytelling, the paintings demonstrate early reliance on using images to convey meaning.
Egyptian Murals 3000 BCE Large, pictographic murals communicate complex ideas to crowds of thousands. Hieroglyphic symbols—functioning as both representative images and phonetic components—augment larger images to blend visual and verbal communication.
Public Speaking 500 BCE The Greeks pioneer the study and practice of oratory and logography. Centuries later, Ars Oratoria (the art of public speaking) is a mark of professional competence in Rome, especially among politicians and lawyers.
Stained Glass Windows 950 CE Before the printing press, the Roman Catholic Church conveyed stories of saints and biblical characters to a mostly illiterate public through the colorful medium of stained glass. The messages stick.
Bar Graphs 1350 CE Bishop Nicole Oresme creates a “Proto-Bar Graph” for plotting variables in a coordinate system. Thankfully, he lacks distracting, modern textures.
Comic Strips 1845 CE Swiss artist Rudolphe Töpffer develops the forerunner to today’s modern comic strips: he tells complete stories using frames that contain both images and text.
Overhead Projector 1945 CE Police begin using overhead projectors for their identification work, quickly followed by the military, educators, and businesses.
35mm Slide Presentations 1950 CE The 35mm slide projector enables professionals to communicate ideas sequentially to larger audiences. The pioneering 35mm slide firm Genagraphics charges from $300 to $1500 per proprietary slide.
PowerPoint 1987 CE The click heard ‘round the world: PowerPoint 1.0 debuts for the Macintosh. Suddenly everyone can design slides. Little consideration is given to whether or not this is a good idea.
Pervasive PC 1992 CE PCs sit on every desktop in the workplace and high-stakes business communications evolve from printed documents to digital presentations. The 35mm slide companies go extinct almost overnight.
Cognitive Style of PowerPoint 2003 CE Edward Tufte authors “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.” In it, he suggests that PowerPoint impaired the quality of the engineers’ investigative analysis on the Columbia Space Shuttle when it was gravely impacted by debris.
an Inconvenient Truth 2007 CE Al Gore raises environmental consciousness, wins an Academy Award, and receives the Nobel Peace Prize for telling a compelling story about climate change with little more than a slide show.

COMMENTS (10)

Chris Iufer

^{August 11th, 2008

4:58 pm}

The ten commandments on the tablets. Circa ~4000 BCE

Whui-Mei Yeo

^{August 19th, 2008

1:01 pm}

Flip charts, whiteboards, blackboard (the ones used in schools with chalk). These are commonly found in offices even today. I’m not sure where they fit in the timeline but my guess is they come before the time of the overhead projector.

GirlPie

^{August 19th, 2008

4:30 pm}

Oil paintings belong in there, don’t they? Somewhere between Stained Glass Windows and Bar Graphs…

Jim Long

^{August 23rd, 2008

8:29 pm}

I’m kinda thinking the Pervasive PC doesn’t really date from 1350 CE.

Pedro Ricart

^{August 26th, 2008

10:54 am}

Existen varias formas de transmitir de manera audiovisual las presentaciones :

• Pizarrón (blackboard)
Pizarra Blanca (Whiteborad)
• Rotafolios (Flipchart)
Lápiz y Papel (Pencil and Paper)
• Props
• Folletos de mano (Handouts)
• Pósters (Posters)
• El Dictante (Speaker without visual aids)
• Opascopio (en desuso) (Opascope)
• Transparencias (Overheads)
• Cámaras de Documentos (Document Cameras)
• Diapositivas de 35 mm. (35mm.Slides)
• Presentaciones eléctronicas: (Electronic Presentations)

o Pizarras electrónicas Interactivas (Interactive Whiteboards)
o Conectar el PC a un monitor grande o a la pantalla de TV. (para grupos pequeños o aula) (Video)
o Panel LCD y retroproyector. (LCD panel and Overhead Projector)(totalmente en deuso)
o Dispositivos de proyección de Data/video (Datashow) (DLP o LCD)
o Red de área local (LAN) con varias computadoras entre el público (o a través de Internet)
o Videoconferencias (Videoconference)
Webinars

Nancy Duarte

^{August 26th, 2008

4:40 pm}

Hi!

I was thinking that you’re missing icons! Not the doodads that have been gracing/littering our screens since the days of the Lisa (or the STAR system that Xerox was building at PARC), but holy images that, in the Orthodox Church, long pre-date medieval (950 CE) stained glass in the West.

There’s a good (and brief) intro at http://www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=9. Fr. Tom Hopko writes “The icon is Orthodoxy’s highest artistic achievement. It is a gospel proclamation, a doctrinal teaching and a spiritual inspiration in colors and lines.”

If you want to dig deep, the classic modern work is “The Meaning of Icons” by Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky.

And you can see some lovely examples at http://www.anastasisicons.com/Gallery.html.

In short, I think you need to add an icon to your timeline.

Nancy Duarte

^{August 26th, 2008

4:41 pm}

Oops, I submitted the above content for the timeline from an e-mail from Jeff Solof…

Sanaa Belfekih

^{September 3rd, 2008

1:50 pm}

What about the napkin? the often celebrated source of genius business concepts, seems to be back in style..

Corinne Marshall

^{September 17th, 2008

12:23 pm}

What about the film entitled Tarnation? By piecing together home videos made when he was a child / adolescent with some current footage and a GREAT number of PowerPoint slides, the filmmaker made a thoroughly compelling autobiographical feature film (on a budget, too, I would wager…)

Miguel.M

^{October 17th, 2008

1:43 pm}

You need to add a 13th point at the beginning…
“Early Upper Paleolithic Age open air engravings in the river Coa valley (Portugal) bear witness to an artistic vitality and mastery storytelling that have brought us into touch with 25,000 years past time.”