In 1957, the Dutch educator Kees Boeke wrote Cosmic View, a essay exploring “many levels of size and structure, from the astronomically vast to the atomically tiny”.
Boeke’s essay went on to inspire the 1968 animated short, Cosmic Zoom.
Cosmic View and Zoom then inspired the more famous Charles and Ray Eames documentary, Powers of Ten, created in 1977 (previously).
Unknown to me until recently was the 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary, narrated by Morgan Freeman, that was inspired by all of the above: Cosmic Voyage.
Similarly, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for January 20th 2010 was also inspired by all of these. This was not a picture, but the American Museum of Natural History’s documentary, The Known Universe.
All of these are inspiring, breathtaking videos that are short enough for any schedule:
- Cosmic Zoom (08:01)
- Powers of Ten (09:01)
- Cosmic Voyage (36:06)
- The Known Universe (06:31)
Comments
One response to “Cosmic View to The Know Universe”
As Cheryl Cole would say, “that’s right up my street”. Awesome videos, The Known Universe was class – will get around to watching the Cosmic Voyage when I have a spare 40 mins. Morgan Freeman could do a voice over for watching paint dry and I’d be impressed.