TheFood Timelinehas been an net treasure since it went live in 1999 . Predating Wikipedia by two years , it lists oodles of mantrap and ingredients in chronological order of when they were introduced to the human diet , from ice to cronuts . Now , the darling , costless imagination is in want of a new keeper , Eaterreports .
The timeline is especially impressive considering it was built and maintained byone person . Lynne Olver launched it as a passion project in an era when online educational materials were still limited . She invested 30 60 minutes a week of her personal time into the web site in addition to working as a consultation bibliothec for the Morris County Public Library in New Jersey . After more than 15 years , she never charter stave members or sold ads to help her ladder the Food Timeline .
Olver died of Crab in 2015 , and the site has n’t been updated since then . She leave a legacy that ’s difficult to have up : Though she never claimed the timeline to be 100 per centum precise ( a muckle offood historyis ground on dim and conflicting history ) , she held it to a high criterion . She checked her information against dependable mention tools and cited all her sources . Users could attain out to her with any questions they had , and she promised to react to them within 48 hr .
Now , five years after her death , Olver ’s family is looking for someone who can show the same tier of commitment to the task . They wo n’t be open away the sphere to the first individual who asks ; the Food Timeline ’s new custodian must agree to keep it simple , approachable , and ad - free the way Olver intended . A few candidate have expressed interest , including the Culinary Institute of America , but the family is still wait for the perfect owner . Until then , the production of Olver ’s fixation remains free foranyone to accessas it has since 1999 .
[ h / tEater ]
