Handloader magazine has had a long running column on individual powders, which cartridges each is best known for, structure, chemistry and history. So buying one of the Handloader DVD sets would be a good place to start. Many reloading manuals also contain articles on powders, and there have been many articles posted on the internet like the series Paco Kelly did on Sixgunner.com; which is where I got the following information.
Bullseye was developed by the Bulls Eye Powder company in the mid 1890's, which was then bought by Dupont in 1898 as they built a monopoly on the production of smokeless powder, and was spun off to the Hercules Powder company in 1903 when the government finally won the last appeals in the Dupont Monopoly anti-trust case of 1901. It's now made by Alliant who bought Hercules in 1990.
Unique was developed by Dupont in 1898, and also went to Hercules in the anti-trust breakup and then Alliant.
Winchester introduced 231 in 1973; it's a revised version of 230 that was introduced in the mid-60's. Hodgdon had it's ballistic twin in HP38, now that Hodgdon has the marketing rights to all of the Winchester powder line expect one of them to disappear.
800x is an IMR powder, and IMR was started by purchasing Dupont's smokeless powder business in 1988. Now IMR also has been purchased by Hodgdon, which started after WWII selling powders made by Dupont for the government arsenals and sold as surplus after the war.
I believe Hodgdon introduced Titegroup in 2002 or 2003. Hodgdons has purchased powder from many manufacturers and sold it under it's own name, sometimes as a clone of another company like W231/HP38, W296/H110 and the IMR number series of powders; more recently as it's own formulation like Titegroup, Lil'Gun and Longshot brought in from companies in Israel (IMI), Australia (ADI) and Eastern Europe (Croatia?).
