History
The comic began in September 2005 when Munroe decided to scan doodles from his school notebooks and put them on his webpage. Eventually the comic was changed into a stand-alone website, where Munroe started selling T-shirts based on the comic. He currently "works on the comic full time," making Munroe one of the few professional webcomic artists. According to Munroe, the comic's name has no particular significance and is simply a four-letter word without a phonetic pronunciation, something he describes as "a treasured and carefully guarded point in the space of four-character strings." The name of the comic is spelled in all lowercase letters, or all capitals.
In May 2007, the comic garnered widespread attention by depicting online communities in geographic form. Various websites were drawn as continents, each sized according to their relative popularity and located according to their general subject matter. This put xkcd at number two on the Syracuse Post-Standard's "The new hotness" list.
In October 2008, The New Yorker magazine online published an interview and "Cartoon Off" between Randall Munroe and Farley Katz. For the "Cartoon-Off," Katz and Munroe each drew: "the Internet, as envisioned by the elderly", "String Theory", "1999", and "your favorite animal eating your favorite food".
In March, 2010, a puzzle hidden inside of the collection xkcd: Volume 0 was cracked by many members of the xkcd forums. The solution was "<3<3<3 2010-06-26 14:28:57 37°46′10″N 122°28′59″W / 37.769573°N 122.483123°W / 37.769573; -122.483123." The first six characters were hearts, followed by a date, time, and coordinates. (June 26, 2010, 2:28:57 pm at Golden Gate Park, specifically at the coordinates specified by Google Earth if you search for Golden Gate Park.) At the appropriate time and date, Randall again met with fans and handed out 255 limited edition prints of xkcd: Volume 0, titled xkcd: Volume 0 Service Pack 1.
For April Fools Day 2012, Comic no. 1037 ("Umwelt") displayed different comics depending on browser, location, and IP address range
On September 19, 2012, Comic no. 1110 ("Click and Drag"), featured a panel which can be explored via clicking and dragging its insides. It immediately triggered positive response on social websites and forums. The large image measures 165,888 pixels wide by 79,822 pixels high
Read more about this topic: Bobby Tables
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)