Note on the complexities of simple things such as a timeline. On the notions text, e-text, hypertext, and origins of machine translation.

The composition of a timeline depends on purpose, perspective, and scale – and of the very understanding of the word, the phenomenon referred to, and whether the focus is the idea or concept, an instance of an idea or a phenomenon, a process, or an event and so forth.
A main function of timelines is to provide an overview over a longer history, it is a kind of a mnemotechnic device or a particular kind of Knowledge Organization System (KOS). The entries in the timeline should be brief and indisputable. Therefore, timelines often identify the first occurrences’ rather than the most widespread or most qualified instances leaving the fuller and more complex, and possibly disputable story out. But even first occurrences are often difficult to establish.
The first occurrence is most often only the first finding of an instance. Older instances may be found and competing definitions develop either within a field or in different fields.
This is further complicated since the phenomena, their names, and their meanings may change over time. Former meanings may become redundant, or they must accommodate to and coexist with new meanings. The time and place of the composition of the timeline is to be considered in interpreting the things listed.
The following note will discuss these issues as they occur in the development of the notions of text and hypertext, and of machine translation.