What We Do
Our Deep Zoom mosaic of Charles Darwin, which we created for Shropshire Tourism,
is composed of scanned images of the entire contents of his groundbreaking works
‘On The Origin of Species’. It looks like a normal picture at first, but when you
zoom in using your mouse wheel, you can see that it’s made up of hundreds of printed
pages.
“On The Origin of Species” - Reproduced with the kind permission from John van Wyhe
ed., The Complete Work of Charles
Darwin Online.
Please click on the "Install Silverlight" link above to install the Microsoft Silverlight
plug-in for Internet Explorer and select "Run". Once installed you may have to refresh
the page to load the image. To do so, hold down the CTRL key and press F5.
When the image is loaded you may zoom in and out of it using the wheel button on
your mouse, and can move around the image by holding the left mouse button down
and dragging to a new location. Clicking in the image and pressing the 'F' key will
switch the image to full screen mode. In full screen mode, use the up and down arrow
keys on your keyboard to zoom in and out.
On the Origin of Species
November 24th 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s
Origin of the Species, (full title “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”), that
shook the scientific and religious communities. It is very readable, even for the
non-academic specialist, and attracted widespread interest on publication as well
as igniting the creation vs. evolution debate that continues to this day.
Based on the evidence Darwin had accumulated on his voyages aboard The Beagle in
the 1830’s and his subsequent experiments after his return to England the book was
highly controversial upon publication due its contradiction of religious beliefs.
Although the scientific theory of evolution has itself evolved since Darwin’s seminal
work, natural selection is still the most commonly accepted scientific model of
how species evolve.
The Bicentenary Celebrations of the Birth of Charles Darwin
February 12th 2009 marks 200 years since the birth of perhaps the world’s most influential
naturalist. There are a number of events planned to mark this anniversary of Shrewsbury’s
most famous son planned by the Shropshire Tourism Board. It is for this reason that
Shoothill, the Shrewsbury based specialist software developer, decided to showcase
a new Microsoft technology, Deep Zoom, using the entirety of the book that started
the whole theory of natural selection.
Rod Plummer, Managing Director of Shoothill, enthuses: “Shropshire, and particularly
Shrewsbury, continues to lack the recognition it deserves when it comes to technological
innovation. I have, in the course of my career, worked with some real ground-breakers
hailing from Shropshire and many go on to work all across the world. It is my intent
to put Shrewsbury back on the global map with our suite of bespoke solutions being
applied in mainstream commercial operations. How better to herald a new age of technical
innovation in Shrewsbury than by celebrating, and paying tribute to, one of the
greatest thinkers in human history.”
To find out more about the activities planned to mark these two historic events,
go to www.discoverdarwin.co.uk.
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