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I have attempted to group together projects where there has been a unified effort, or where several interferometers have been strongly associated. I have started each interferometer in the year it first acquired fringes and ended it (if applicable) in the year it ceased observations. Some of these groupings are subjective: for example, three quite separate interferometer projects have existed at the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur - although I group them altogether in this plot. Likewise, although I've shown that FLUOR began and ended over a brief period, that only denotes its operation at the McMath Solar Observatory, and FLUOR has long since continued to serve as a separated beam-combining unit within the IOTA interferometer.

Some significant events in the timeline are indicated by the red triangles. These include

• 1956: First fringes with the prototype intensity interferometer by Hanbury-Brown and Twiss.
• 1970: Invention of speckle interferometry by A. Labeyrie.
• 1972: First 10 micron heterodyne fringes by J. Gay and A. Journet.
• 1974: First 10 micron heterodyne fringes with separated telescopes by Johnson, Betz, and Townes.
• 1974: First direct detection visible fringes by A. Labeyrie.
• 1979: First phase tracking stellar interferometer, M. Shao and D.H. Staelin.
• 1982: First fringe measurements at 2.2 microns, by G.P. Di Benedetto and G. Conti.
• 1985: First measurement of closure phase at optical wavelengths by J.E. Baldwin et al.
• 1986: First fully automated interferometer for wide angle astrometry, M. Shao, M.M. Colavita et al.
• 1992: First use of single-mode fibers by Coudé du Foresto and S.T. Ridgway.
• 1995: First optical synthesis image with separated telescopes, by J.E.Baldwin et al.

Peter Lawson
23 December 1999