The Academy Awards Timeline

The 16th of May, 1929, represents the date when the first edition of the Academy Awards took place. The event, also known as the Oscars, is held annually to recognize artistic and technical merits in the American cinema industry as assessed by the voting membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The ceremony, during which cinematic achievements from 24 categories are awarded, has served as a model for the Emmy Awards (its equivalent for television), the Tony Awards (theater) and the Grammy Awards (music).

To celebrate the world’s oldest entertainment awards ceremony, we have created the Academy Awards Timeline, which highlights a series of interesting facts from its history.

The inaugural edition of the Oscars was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with 270 people in the audience. Honoring participants in the film-making industry of the time for their works between 1927 and 1928, the first Academy Awards presentation ran for 15 minutes only. The winners received a gold-plated bronze statuette, now officially named Oscar, which was created by American sculptor George Stanley. For three years during World War II, because of a metal shortage, the statuettes were made of painted plaster. However, after the WWII was over, the Academy enabled the recipients to replace their plaster trophies with gold-plated metal ones.

Initially held within a private dinner function, the ceremony is now broadcast live in more than 200 countries.

The Academy Awards chronology was created with Office Timeline, an easy-to-use PowerPoint plugin that helps you quickly make elegant timelines, Gantt charts and other similar graphics. You can copy and share the image for free, and update and edit it using the Plus version of the tool.

Download the Academy Awards Timeline for PowerPoint here.