What the heck is the Wikipedia background image?

Factual Questions
21

[QUOTE=Montgomery0]
Okay, it is definitely a book, but which book is it? :smiley:
[/QUOTE]
Seriously, I’ve wondered about this myself. Would be an interesting factoid to know which book they used.

[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
This to me is the interesting part. It seems that if you don’t immediately recognize it as a book, your mind begins to grapple with what it *could *be, and will shoot off down a wrong track from which it’s difficult to come back.
[/QUOTE]
This illusion is the perfect example then: http://www.moillusions.com/2007/01/sometimes-book-isnt-just-book.html Personally, I’d prefer the ‘wrong track’ any day. :slight_smile:

22

[QUOTE=Mushbrain]
Seriously, I’ve wondered about this myself. Would be an interesting factoid to know which book they used.
…
[/QUOTE]

If you look at the right hand side, the book appears to have those colored section indicators on the edge of the pages like a dictionary or an encyclopedia, which makes sense. I’m sure there’s some proper term for them, which somebody is going to supply.

23

Hmm. I see a large cigar.

24

Don’t feel bad - I just figured out that the Saturn logo is the planet.
:smack:

25

It’s a sailboat!

26

It’s the Great Wall of China, with the road running up to the crest and a couple of tower areas.

27

[QUOTE=Don’t fight the hypothetical]
Don’t feel bad - I just figured out that the Saturn logo is the planet.
:smack:
[/QUOTE]

Don’t feel bad–I never knew the Subaru logo represented the Pleiades, until an astronomer told me. (Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades.)

28

Ohmigod! It’s a book!

I have been wondering about this for the longest time, and I can’t believe I missed it… I feel a need to go pound my head against the wall.

29

I always saw it as a cloud with eminating sunrays which were illumintating a larger cloud mass.
I’m suprised it is actually just an open book.

Ooh and the Fed Ex arrow thing … now I see it, now I don’t
If you do intend on using an arrow would it not make more sense to make it more obvious.

30

[QUOTE=wendigo1974]
If you do intend on using an arrow would it not make more sense to make it more obvious.
[/QUOTE]

There are many logos with “obvious” arrows, and they’re just so mundane compared with Fedex.

Same thing with Wikipedia. What if they just used an “obvious” picture of a book?

31

True, then again I never got the meaning of the British Rail logo until it was pointed out to me.

Maybe I have an arrow-recognition deficency or I just don’t look too hard at company logos :frowning:

32

[QUOTE=Mushbrain]
This illusion is the perfect example then: http://www.moillusions.com/2007/01/sometimes-book-isnt-just-book.html Personally, I’d prefer the ‘wrong track’ any day. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]
Or the “right rack.”

33

I always thought it was a mountainside, with rays of light coming from it.
[QUOTE=panache45]
An open book. How can anybody not see it?
[/QUOTE]
The reason I was never able to see it was because I never saw the right edge of the page. Thank you, yabob for showing me the entire picture. On every pc I’ve used, the picture is much larger, so most of it gets cut off. The center spine of the book is only slightly to the left of the center of the screen, so those “page edges” at the right side of the picture would be about two feet to the right of my monitor.

34

I never saw the FedEx arrow until now. You’re talking about the space between the E and the X, right?

If so, I think it is so subtle as to be useless. But that’s just my opinion.

35

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
I still don’t see a book :(.

Looks like a mountain with rays of awesome to me.
[/QUOTE]

I’m with you there - I always thought it was a mountain, as well.

Now that I’ve read this thread, I can barely discern how it might be a book, but I’m not really getting it.

36

[QUOTE=HeyHomie]
Now that I’ve read this thread, I can barely discern how it might be a book, but I’m not really getting it.
[/QUOTE]
Did you see the link in post #9?

37

If you said a book, you’ve got the wrong answer.
It’s clearly one of the other answers, the Great Wall of China.
I’ve located the exact angle view here for comparison. http://www.lehsd.k12.nj.us/users/dupuis/images/Great_Wall_of_China.jpg

38

It’s not a book…
That’s a space station!

39

I like the Arabic Wikipedia background better.

40

[QUOTE=unlimitlessly]
It’s clearly one of the other answers, the Great Wall of China.
[/QUOTE]
The proof is that you can see it from space.