Credits and sources
Where everything
on this site comes from.
WHORL and the Tay Glasshouse are invented for this site. The shells, the people and the science are real, and so are the prints and photographs below.
Prints
- Franz Michael Regenfuss, Choix de Coquillages et de Crustacés, 1758, plates III, IV, V and IX. The 24 shells in the ring and the deck are cut from these plates. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, CC0. The Met
- Rembrandt van Rijn, The Shell, 1650, etching. Art Institute of Chicago, CC0. Art Institute of Chicago
- Kitagawa Utamaro, Shells Under Water and Girls Gathering Shells on the Sea-shore, from Gifts of the Ebb Tide, 1789–90. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0. The Met
Photographs, Wikimedia Commons
- Perspective sundial: “Architectonica perspectiva-o” by Magnefl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Common whelk: “Buccinum undatum 01” by H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Textile cone: “Cylinder textile textile 01” by H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Ammonite: “Dactylioceras commune” by Fred Cherrygarden, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Precious wentletrap: “Epitonium scalare shell” by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Green ormer: “Haliotis tuberculata lamellosa 01” by H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Common periwinkle: “Littorina littorea 02” by H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Chambered nautilus: “Nautilus pompilius albino” by Eric Polk, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Tent olive: “Oliva porphyria - Museo Civico di Storia Naturale Giacomo Doria - Genoa, Italy - DSC03252” by Daderot, CC0. Wikimedia Commons
- King scallop: “Pecten maximus 02” by H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Ram's horn squid: “Spirula spirula - Eli - 376972970” by Eli, CC BY 4.0. Wikimedia Commons
- Tower screw shell: “Turritella terebra terebra 01” by H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
The model
Every shell drawn on this site comes from one model: Raup's coiling numbers (W, D, T and the shape of the opening) evaluated on the graphics card, with pigment laid down row by row along the growth by Rule 30 (textile cone) or by a mark that spreads to its neighbours and then rests (tent olive). The numbers for each shell are our settings, tuned by eye against the photographs above, not published measurements.
Sources
- Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), in our own words: Gastropod shell, Logarithmic spiral, On Growth and Form, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, David M. Raup, Developmental bias, Conus textile, Rule 30, Turing pattern, and the article on each of the twelve species.
Type
Reddit Sans and Reddit Mono (Lettermatic for Reddit) and EB Garamond (Georg Duffner, Octavio Pardo), all under the SIL Open Font License.