Some time ago I requested support for BC dates in Airtable date fields (perhaps by denoting them as negative dates). I understand this feature is not a large value proposition for Airtable, and that it probably presents some unique challenges.
I lieu of official support for BC dates in the date field, I figured I’d see if I could tinker with the Timeline App to see if I could get it to ingest a modifier that will convert a date to BC. Alas - the Timeline App is not open sourced like several other Apps by Airtable.
So at this point, I’d like to reiterate my request for support for BC dates in Airtable date fields, or else request that the Timeline App be open sourced.
My goal, if it wasn’t obvious, is to be able to build a massive historical timeline for educational purposes. I think Airtable provides a very neat platform for something like this because of the ability to expand a timeline record and explore any number of custom fields, including photos, videos, PDF’s, relevant data, and links to other records like “Notable People”, “Notable Groups”, or to a parent event (think like “The American Civil War” being the parent event for “The Battle of Gettysburg”). Also, I could easily narrow down the visible records on the timeline with multiple, overlapping qualifiers, by building views to base the timeline on, such as "Only records where Continent is Europe && Area is Mediterranean && Event Type is Political".
I’ve been frustrated for over a year now that my kids and I are missing the ability to add events from (what I deem to be) the most interesting period of history - the Classical Period!
