Timeline of Systematic Data and the Development of Computable Knowledge

How civilization has systematized more and more areas of knowledge, collected the data associated with them and made them amenable to automation and computation

Historical Timeline of Computable Knowledge: 1960-2010

The concept of links between documents begin to be discussed as a paradigm for organizing textual material and knowledge.

1960: Hypertext Imagining connectivity in the world's knowledge The concept of links between documents begin to be discussed as a paradigm for organizing textual material and knowledge.

1960: Full-Text Search Finding text without an index The first full-text searching of documents by computer is demonstrated.

1960: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Organizing the world's medical knowledge The first version of the MeSH medical lexicon goes into use.

Roger Tomlinson initiates the Canada Geographic Information System, creating the first GIS system.

1962: First GIS system Computerizing geographic information Roger Tomlinson initiates the Canada Geographic Information System, creating the first GIS system.

1963: ZIP Codes ZIP (Zoning Improvement Plan) codes are introduced by the US Post Office.

1963: ASCII Code A standard number for every letter ASCII Code defines a standard bit representation for every character in English.

Eugene Garfield publishes the first edition of the <i>Science Citation Index</i>, which indexes scientific literature through references in papers.

1963: Science Citation Index Mapping science by citations Eugene Garfield publishes the first edition of the Science Citation Index, which indexes scientific literature through references in papers.

1963: Data Universal Numbering System (D-U-N-S) A number for every business Dun & Bradstreet begins to assign a unique number to every company.

The National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) publishes tables and properties of many higher mathematical functions

1964: Abramowitz and Stegun Collecting mathematical functions The National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) publishes tables and properties of many higher mathematical functions

1966: Freedom of Information Act US President Lyndon Johnson signs the act into law, mandating public access to government records.

1966: SBN Codes A number for every book British SBN codes are introduced, later generalized to ISBN in 1970.

1967: DIALOG Retrieving information from anywhere The DIALOG online information retrieval system becomes accessible from remote locations.

Henriette Avram creates the MAchine-Readable Cataloging system at the Library of Congress, defining metatagging standards for books.

1968: MARC Henriette Avram creates the MAchine-Readable Cataloging system at the Library of Congress, defining metatagging standards for books.

Relational databases and query languages allow huge amounts of data to be stored in a way that makes certain common kinds of queries efficient enough to be done as a routine part of business.

1970s: Relational Databases Making relations between data computable Relational databases and query languages allow huge amounts of data to be stored in a way that makes certain common kinds of queries efficient enough to be done as a routine part of business.

With the emergence of progressively cheaper computers, it becomes possible to do computations immediately, integrating them as part of the everyday process of working with knowledge.

1970—1980s: Interactive Computing Getting immediate results from computers With the emergence of progressively cheaper computers, it becomes possible to do computations immediately, integrating them as part of the everyday process of working with knowledge.

Largely as an offshoot of AI, expert systems are an attempt to capture the knowledge of human experts in specialized domains, using logic-based inferential systems.

1970—1980s: Expert Systems Capturing expert knowledge as inference rules Largely as an offshoot of AI, expert systems are an attempt to capture the knowledge of human experts in specialized domains, using logic-based inferential systems.

Karen Spärck Jones, a computer scientist known for her work on information retrieval and natural language processing, is responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency, which underlies most modern search engines.

1972: Karen Spärck Jones Inverse document frequency Karen Spärck Jones, a computer scientist known for her work on information retrieval and natural language processing, is responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency, which underlies most modern search engines.

1973: Lexis Legal information goes online Lexis provides full-text records of US court opinions in an online retrieval system.

1973: Neil Sloane Neil Sloane begins to catalog "interesting" sequences of integers.

Fischer Black and Myron Scholes give a mathematical method for valuing stock options.

1973: Black-Scholes Formula Bring mathematics to financial derivatives Fischer Black and Myron Scholes give a mathematical method for valuing stock options.

1974: UPC Codes Every product gets a number The UPC standard for barcodes is launched.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) implements an eight-digit coded system to serve as a bibliographic tool for students, librarians and researchers to uniquely identify articles, specific text volumes and other serialized publications.

1976: International Standard Serial Number Systematizing serial publications The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) implements an eight-digit coded system to serve as a bibliographic tool for students, librarians and researchers to uniquely identify articles, specific text volumes and other serialized publications.

With precursors in the 1940s, neural networks emerge in the 1980s as a concept for storing and manipulating various types of knowledge using connections reminiscent of nerve cells.

1980s: Neural Networks Handling knowledge by emulating the brain With precursors in the 1940s, neural networks emerge in the 1980s as a concept for storing and manipulating various types of knowledge using connections reminiscent of nerve cells.

1982: GenBank Collecting the codes of life Walter Goad at Los Alamos founds GenBank to collect all genome sequences being found.

1983: DNS The Domain Name System for hierarchical Internet addresses is created; in 1984, .com and other top-level domains (TLDs) are named.

1984: Cyc Creating a computable database of common sense Cyc is a long-running project to encode common sense facts in a computable form.

<i>Mathematica</i> is created to provide a uniform system for all forms of algorithmic computation by defining a symbolic language to represent arbitrary constructs and then assembling a huge web of consistent algorithms to operate on them.

1988: Mathematica Language for algorithmic computation Mathematica is created to provide a uniform system for all forms of algorithmic computation by defining a symbolic language to represent arbitrary constructs and then assembling a huge web of consistent algorithms to operate on them.

The web grows to provide billions of pages of freely available information from all corners of civilization.

1989: The Web Collecting the world's information The web grows to provide billions of pages of freely available information from all corners of civilization.

1990: IMDb Indexing movies The Internet Movie Database is launched.

1991: Gopher Burrowing around the internet Gopher provides a menu-based system for finding material on computers connected to the internet.

1991: Unicode Representing every language The Unicode standard assigns a numerical code to every glyph in every human language.

1993: Secure Hash Algorithm Specifications for the SHA-0 algorithm are published by NIST.

1993: Tim Berners-Lee A catalog of the web Tim Berners-Lee creates the Virtual Library, the first systematic catalog of the web.

1994: Yahoo! Jerry Yang and David Filo create a hierarchical directory of the web.

1994: QR Codes Quick Response (QR) scannable barcodes are created in Japan, encoding information for computer eyes to read.

1995: CDDB Indexing music Ti Kan indexes CDs with CDDB, which becomes Gracenote.

Brewster Kahle founds the Internet Archive to begin systematically capturing and storing the state of the web.

1996: The Internet Archive Saving the history of the web Brewster Kahle founds the Internet Archive to begin systematically capturing and storing the state of the web.

Google and other search engines provide highly efficient capabilities to do textual searches across the whole content of the web.

1998: Google An engine to search the web Google and other search engines provide highly efficient capabilities to do textual searches across the whole content of the web.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices embedded with connectivity and software that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

1999: Internet of Things (IoT) The Internet of Things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices embedded with connectivity and software that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey spends nearly a decade automatically mapping every visible object in the astronomical universe.

2000: Sloan Digital Sky Survey Mapping every object in the universe The Sloan Digital Sky Survey spends nearly a decade automatically mapping every visible object in the astronomical universe.

The fingerprint of any scientific document, the Digital Object Identifier has increased the visibility of and access to scientific publications while ensuring the intellectual property of each piece of work remains intact.

2000: Digital Object Identifier DOI as a persistent handle is standardized The fingerprint of any scientific document, the Digital Object Identifier has increased the visibility of and access to scientific publications while ensuring the intellectual property of each piece of work remains intact.

Social networking and other collective websites define a mechanism for collectively assembling information by and about people.

2000: Web 2.0 Societally organized information Social networking and other collective websites define a mechanism for collectively assembling information by and about people.

Volunteer contributors assemble millions of pages of encyclopedia material, providing textual descriptions of practically all areas of human knowledge.

2001: Wikipedia Self-organized encyclopedia Volunteer contributors assemble millions of pages of encyclopedia material, providing textual descriptions of practically all areas of human knowledge.

Stephen Wolfram explores the universe of possible simple programs and shows that knowledge about many natural and artificial processes could be represented in terms of surprisingly simple programs.

2002: A New Kind of Science Exploring the computational universe Stephen Wolfram explores the universe of possible simple programs and shows that knowledge about many natural and artificial processes could be represented in terms of surprisingly simple programs.

The Human Genome Project is declared complete in finding a reference DNA sequence for every human.

2003: Human Genome Project The complete code of a human The Human Genome Project is declared complete in finding a reference DNA sequence for every human.

2004: Facebook Capturing the social network Facebook begins to capture social relations between people on a large scale.

2004: OpenStreetMap Steve Coast initiates a project to create a crowdsourced street-level map of the world.

Satoshi Nakamoto invents blockchain as the public transaction ledger for Bitcoin.

2008: Blockchain Cryptographic transactions and distributed ledgers Satoshi Nakamoto invents blockchain as the public transaction ledger for Bitcoin.

Consumer electronics companies like Fitbit begin releasing activity trackers that track movement, steps and heart rate through signal processing, uploading data via the internet to a cloud service to be processed and analyzed.

2009: Wearable Biometric Device Consumer electronics companies like Fitbit begin releasing activity trackers that track movement, steps and heart rate through signal processing, uploading data via the internet to a cloud service to be processed and analyzed.

Wolfram|Alpha is launched as a website that computes answers to natural-language queries based on a large collection of algorithms and curated data.

2009: Wolfram|Alpha An engine for computational knowledge Wolfram|Alpha is launched as a website that computes answers to natural-language queries based on a large collection of algorithms and curated data.

2012: ORCID ORCID uniquely identifies scientific and academic authors and contributors.

Digital assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa that perform digital speech recognition to automate a variety of consumer or industrial applications become popular.

2014: Digital Assistants Digital assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa that perform digital speech recognition to automate a variety of consumer or industrial applications become popular.

The Wolfram Data Repository makes public data computable and accessible while also keeping it securely stored.

2017: The Wolfram Data Repository Making public data computable The Wolfram Data Repository makes public data computable and accessible while also keeping it securely stored.

1960

Imagining connectivity in the world's knowledge

1960: Hypertext

Imagining connectivity in the world's knowledge

The concept of links between documents begin to be discussed as a paradigm for organizing textual material and knowledge.

1960: Full-Text Search

Finding text without an index

The first full-text searching of documents by computer is demonstrated.

Organizing the world's medical knowledge

1960: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Organizing the world's medical knowledge

The first version of the MeSH medical lexicon goes into use.

1962: First GIS system

Computerizing geographic information

Roger Tomlinson initiates the Canada Geographic Information System, creating the first GIS system.

1963: ZIP Codes

ZIP (Zoning Improvement Plan) codes are introduced by the US Post Office.

1963: ASCII Code

A standard number for every letter

ASCII Code defines a standard bit representation for every character in English.

1963: Science Citation Index

Mapping science by citations

Eugene Garfield publishes the first edition of the Science Citation Index, which indexes scientific literature through references in papers.

1963: Data Universal Numbering System (D-U-N-S)

A number for every business

Dun & Bradstreet begins to assign a unique number to every company.

1964: Abramowitz and Stegun

Collecting mathematical functions

The National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) publishes tables and properties of many higher mathematical functions

1966: Freedom of Information Act

US President Lyndon Johnson signs the act into law, mandating public access to government records.

1966: SBN Codes

A number for every book

British SBN codes are introduced, later generalized to ISBN in 1970.

1967: DIALOG

Retrieving information from anywhere

The DIALOG online information retrieval system becomes accessible from remote locations.

1968: MARC

Henriette Avram creates the MAchine-Readable Cataloging system at the Library of Congress, defining metatagging standards for books.

1970

Making relations between data computable

1970s: Relational Databases

Making relations between data computable

Relational databases and query languages allow huge amounts of data to be stored in a way that makes certain common kinds of queries efficient enough to be done as a routine part of business.

Getting immediate results from computers

1970—1980s: Interactive Computing

Getting immediate results from computers

With the emergence of progressively cheaper computers, it becomes possible to do computations immediately, integrating them as part of the everyday process of working with knowledge.

Capturing expert knowledge as inference rules

1970—1980s: Expert Systems

Capturing expert knowledge as inference rules

Largely as an offshoot of AI, expert systems are an attempt to capture the knowledge of human experts in specialized domains, using logic-based inferential systems.

1972: Karen Spärck Jones

Inverse document frequency

Karen Spärck Jones, a computer scientist known for her work on information retrieval and natural language processing, is responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency, which underlies most modern search engines.

1973: Lexis

Legal information goes online

Lexis provides full-text records of US court opinions in an online retrieval system.

1973: Neil Sloane

Neil Sloane begins to catalog "interesting" sequences of integers.

Bring mathematics to financial derivatives

1973: Black-Scholes Formula

Bring mathematics to financial derivatives

Fischer Black and Myron Scholes give a mathematical method for valuing stock options.

1974: UPC Codes

Every product gets a number

The UPC standard for barcodes is launched.

1976: International Standard Serial Number

Systematizing serial publications

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) implements an eight-digit coded system to serve as a bibliographic tool for students, librarians and researchers to uniquely identify articles, specific text volumes and other serialized publications.

1980

Handling knowledge by emulating the brain

1980s: Neural Networks

Handling knowledge by emulating the brain

With precursors in the 1940s, neural networks emerge in the 1980s as a concept for storing and manipulating various types of knowledge using connections reminiscent of nerve cells.

1982: GenBank

Collecting the codes of life

Walter Goad at Los Alamos founds GenBank to collect all genome sequences being found.

1983: DNS

The Domain Name System for hierarchical Internet addresses is created; in 1984, .com and other top-level domains (TLDs) are named.

Creating a computable database of common sense

1984: Cyc

Creating a computable database of common sense

Cyc is a long-running project to encode common sense facts in a computable form.

1988: Mathematica

Language for algorithmic computation

Mathematica is created to provide a uniform system for all forms of algorithmic computation by defining a symbolic language to represent arbitrary constructs and then assembling a huge web of consistent algorithms to operate on them.

1989: The Web

Collecting the world's information

The web grows to provide billions of pages of freely available information from all corners of civilization.

1990

1990: IMDb

Indexing movies

The Internet Movie Database is launched.

1991: Gopher

Burrowing around the internet

Gopher provides a menu-based system for finding material on computers connected to the internet.

1991: Unicode

Representing every language

The Unicode standard assigns a numerical code to every glyph in every human language.

1993: Secure Hash Algorithm

Specifications for the SHA-0 algorithm are published by NIST.

1993: Tim Berners-Lee

A catalog of the web

Tim Berners-Lee creates the Virtual Library, the first systematic catalog of the web.

1994: Yahoo!

Jerry Yang and David Filo create a hierarchical directory of the web.

1994: QR Codes

Quick Response (QR) scannable barcodes are created in Japan, encoding information for computer eyes to read.

1995: CDDB

Indexing music

Ti Kan indexes CDs with CDDB, which becomes Gracenote.

1996: The Internet Archive

Saving the history of the web

Brewster Kahle founds the Internet Archive to begin systematically capturing and storing the state of the web.

1998: Google

An engine to search the web

Google and other search engines provide highly efficient capabilities to do textual searches across the whole content of the web.

1999: Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices embedded with connectivity and software that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

2000

2000: Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Mapping every object in the universe

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey spends nearly a decade automatically mapping every visible object in the astronomical universe.

DOI as a persistent handle is standardized

2000: Digital Object Identifier

DOI as a persistent handle is standardized

The fingerprint of any scientific document, the Digital Object Identifier has increased the visibility of and access to scientific publications while ensuring the intellectual property of each piece of work remains intact.

2000: Web 2.0

Societally organized information

Social networking and other collective websites define a mechanism for collectively assembling information by and about people.

2001: Wikipedia

Self-organized encyclopedia

Volunteer contributors assemble millions of pages of encyclopedia material, providing textual descriptions of practically all areas of human knowledge.

2002: A New Kind of Science

Exploring the computational universe

Stephen Wolfram explores the universe of possible simple programs and shows that knowledge about many natural and artificial processes could be represented in terms of surprisingly simple programs.

2003: Human Genome Project

The complete code of a human

The Human Genome Project is declared complete in finding a reference DNA sequence for every human.

2004: Facebook

Capturing the social network

Facebook begins to capture social relations between people on a large scale.

2004: OpenStreetMap

Steve Coast initiates a project to create a crowdsourced street-level map of the world.

Cryptographic transactions and distributed ledgers

2008: Blockchain

Cryptographic transactions and distributed ledgers

Satoshi Nakamoto invents blockchain as the public transaction ledger for Bitcoin.

2009: Wearable Biometric Device

Consumer electronics companies like Fitbit begin releasing activity trackers that track movement, steps and heart rate through signal processing, uploading data via the internet to a cloud service to be processed and analyzed.

2009: Wolfram|Alpha

An engine for computational knowledge

Wolfram|Alpha is launched as a website that computes answers to natural-language queries based on a large collection of algorithms and curated data.

2010

2012: ORCID

ORCID uniquely identifies scientific and academic authors and contributors.

2014: Digital Assistants

Digital assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa that perform digital speech recognition to automate a variety of consumer or industrial applications become popular.

2017: The Wolfram Data Repository

Making public data computable

The Wolfram Data Repository makes public data computable and accessible while also keeping it securely stored.