Topic ID #12981 - posted 7/20/2011 4:48 PM
Jennifer Palmer
Webmaster
Google Earth Archaeology
Jennifer Palmer
Webmaster
Google Earth Archaeology
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 | Articles, Featured
By Henry Rothwell
According to one of Google Earth’s co-creators the inspiration for Google Earth originated with a description of a piece of software called Earth, which was instrumental to the plot of Neal Stephenson’s dystopian (but surprisingly fun) cyberpunk classic Snowcrash. In Stephenson’s novel Earth was a globe across which was tiled satellite imagery, maps, architectural designs and low level aerial photography. By ‘grabbing’ the globe and zooming in, the user could glean as much geographical information as they could wish for.
Another of its creators says it has its origins in the 1957 flip-book ‘Cosmic View’ by Kees Boeke. This was adapted into the ground breaking 1968 film ‘Powers of Ten’, in which the viewer is introduced to a quiet picnic scene on a Chicago lakeside, before being whisked away on a macroscopic journey into outer space, and then descending (via the pores on the hand of the picnicker) into the world of the sub-atomic particle. Regardless of the original inspiration (and it seems it’s a little of both) the software in its later incarnations contains enough elements of each to be an incredibly useful tool for anyone concerned with maps, terrain, and the manipulation of geospatial data.
Read more at Past Horizons.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 | Articles, Featured
By Henry Rothwell
According to one of Google Earth’s co-creators the inspiration for Google Earth originated with a description of a piece of software called Earth, which was instrumental to the plot of Neal Stephenson’s dystopian (but surprisingly fun) cyberpunk classic Snowcrash. In Stephenson’s novel Earth was a globe across which was tiled satellite imagery, maps, architectural designs and low level aerial photography. By ‘grabbing’ the globe and zooming in, the user could glean as much geographical information as they could wish for.
Another of its creators says it has its origins in the 1957 flip-book ‘Cosmic View’ by Kees Boeke. This was adapted into the ground breaking 1968 film ‘Powers of Ten’, in which the viewer is introduced to a quiet picnic scene on a Chicago lakeside, before being whisked away on a macroscopic journey into outer space, and then descending (via the pores on the hand of the picnicker) into the world of the sub-atomic particle. Regardless of the original inspiration (and it seems it’s a little of both) the software in its later incarnations contains enough elements of each to be an incredibly useful tool for anyone concerned with maps, terrain, and the manipulation of geospatial data.
Read more at Past Horizons.
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