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The peepholes will utilize bespoke round slides which should have greatest visual clarity towards the center. They will convey short memorable bytes of information with accompanying graphics dissolving in to the the periphery.
The fusion of fact with art within a peephole is likely to be of particular appeal to the young. If it is practical to mount the lenses behind the front glazing, the visual effect may be quite stunning as they will appear as microcosmic islands which frame an aesthetic magic without any visible clues as to how they work. An observer standing in front will see no evidence of any means of creating the image, she will see only glass (the projection holes within the stone zone background will be obfuscated due to the fact that light passing through them will form an image on the front lens, however the projection source will not be visible to those looking around and behind the lenses due to the low angle at which the projection holes can be viewed). Furthermore the floating images will be viewable at close distance by a relaxed eye, allowing viewers to enjoy stimuli which they will not have witnessed anywhere else (this format has not been borrowed, it is a part of the art dedicated to this submission)
A bonus of this format is that it is flexible, and should allow various peoples ideas to be incorporated into the map as required. Furthermore it will allow your folks to create new presentations upon the backdrop once mine have expired.
Here are some initial possible ‘peephole factoids’ I have collected. My idea behind these is to present byte size local “Did you know?” points that people will repeat in social situations, thereby generating more visitors to the gallery.
Factoids
These are grouped into categories which are depicted on the map by colour or connecting lines where appropriate.
Transport
The worlds first underground railway line (the Wapping tunnel) was built before the first train service ran (Stephensons rocket in 1830).
The worlds first public railway station was at Crown Street in Liverpool, (you might ask what was at the other end of the line!)
The Mersey rail tunnel was the first to be built under sea water.
The first escalator in a railway station was at Seaforth in 1901.
The Sankey railway viaduct is the earliest one in the world. It is constructed from local Storeton stone carried down river.
The Sankey Canal was the first canal of the Industrial Revolution, its crossing by the first passenger railway in the world by means of this viaduct makes this a site of great significance in transport history. The canal was filled with rubbish in the 1970s.
Birkenhead had the first street tramway in Europe. This early system was horse-drawn and was the brainchild of an American called Mr Train.
The world's first passenger hovercraft service operated in 1961-62 between Leasowe on the Wirral and Rhyl in North Wales.
Britain’s first scheduled passenger helicopter service ran from Speke airport to Cardiff.
Eastham Lock forms the western end of the Manchester Ship Canal, and is the largest lock in the UK
The famous ‘Ferry across the Mersey’ dates back to the 12th century and is Englands first genuine ferry service. It was run by monks from Birchen Head Priory on the Wirral.
In 1086 the Domesday Book gives the first written record of a ferry used at Seacombe.
The Leeds-Liverpool canal is Britain’s longest one.
Ethnic
Liverpool has the hottest melting pot in England. More people in the Princes Park electoral ward were recorded as mixed-race in the 2001 census; than any such local area in the country.
Liverpool has Europe's longest established Chinese community and Chinatown boasts the biggest Chinese arch outside mainland China
Britain's first mosque was established in Tuebrook. It was created by Liverpool lawyer William Henry Quilliam, who converted to Islam after visiting Morocco in 1887.
Liverpool was the port of passage for some 9 million emigrants between 1830 and 1930 from Europe to the New World.
America’s first overseas consul was appointed to Liverpool in 1790
The current Liverpool Record Office is the busiest in the UK outside of London, some of its archives of the city date from the 13th century.
Half of all men living in Wirral and West Lancashire are directly descended from Vikings, according to a study. (Stephen Harding, Nottingham University)
The Wirral is thought to have the highest density of Viking (Norse) place names in the UK
The first reference to Scouse was some 300 years ago in 1708 (in Ned Ward’s ‘The Wooden World Dissected’)
Sport
Liverpool FC is the most popular Premier League football club with a 17.3% share of the total website traffic to its official homepage, according to web analyst company Hitwise.
Hitwise said Liverpool FC had held the title of most popular football club in terms of online traffic for the last two years, barring one week in April this year when Manchester United closed in on the Premiership title.
Liverpool is the most successful footballing city in England - with 27 League Championships, 5 European Cups, three EUFA cups, 1 cup Winners cup, 12 FA Cups and 6 League Cups.
Liverpool is home to the Grand National, the most famous steeplechase in the world, annually watched by 600 million people worldwide.
Horse races organised for the Earls of Derby on the sands at Leasowe in the 16th and 17th centuries are regarded as forerunners of the modern Derby. The Derby horse race was first run at Lord Derby’s private racecourse in 1780
Red Rum, the legendary triple winner of the Grand National, is buried next to the winning post at Aintree racecourse.
Merseyside is the Golfing Capital of England; there are over 40 golf courses, (7 are of championships status, which include the Royal Liverpool which hosted the 2006 Open, and Birkdale which hosted it in 2008).
Bowring Park in Roby became first municipal golf course in England when it opened in 1911
Hoylake is the home of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club. Built in 1869, it is the second oldest golf links in England.
Hoylake is one of the premier sites for Sand Yachting in Britain
In October 1991, the World Windsurfing Speed Record was set on the West Kirby Marine Lake at 42.16 knots. It was held for 2 years until it was beaten in Australia.
Architecture
Liverpool has 2,500 listed buildings, the biggest single collection of Grade One listed buildings and more national museums and galleries than any other city outside London.
Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral is the largest cathedral in Britain and the fifth largest in the world.
The Liver Building is one of the earliest examples of multi-storey reinforced concrete construction and so can be considered the worlds first skyscraper.
The clock faces on the Liver Building are the biggest in the country, 2'6" bigger than Big Ben.
Oriel Chambers designed by Peter Ellis is renowned in Architectural history as avant garde, as it is one one of the first using modern building technology (It has a cast iron frame structure and large prefabricated windows which predate cladding).
St Georges Hall is the last great Neo-Classical Building in Britain.
Port Sunlight was the first factory estate planned as a garden suburb.
Bold Street was formerly a 'ropeway', and is therefore long and straight
The Calder Stones in South Liverpool are older than Stonehenge.
On Leasowe Road is the first building in the world to be heated entirely by solar energy.
The first lighthouses to use parabolic mirrors were built at Hoylake and Bidston.
Built in 1763, Leasowe Lighthouse is the oldest brick lighthouse in Britain.
When New Brighton Tower opened in 1900, it was the tallest in the country.
Great Howard Street prison dating from 1786 is thought to be Europe’s first purpose-built prison.
The Brunswick Buildings were Britain’s first purpose-built office block
The first council housing in Europe (and probably the world) in Vauxhall lasted over a century before demolition in 1977
Learning
Sir Paul McCartney's Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) opened in 1996.
Founded in 1881 with the establishment of University College Liverpool, the University of Liverpool was one of the first civic universities in Britain.
The world's first School of School of Tropical Medicine which opened in Liverpool in 1898 was the worlds first, and they discovered that Malaria could be passed by Mosquito bite.
The Laird School of Art in Birkenhead was the first public school of art outside London[
The world’s first Boy Scout group was founded at the YMCA in Birkenhead in 1908
The Lyceum is believed to have housed the first lending library in Europe (founded in 1757).
In 2005 JM University received a Royal accolade for developing the world's largest robotic telescopes
Arts
Liverpool is the most filmed British city outside London.
The eight museums and galleries that make up National Museums Liverpool possess the greatest collection of artifacts, paintings, specimens and objects collectively held under single ownership in the country.
Liverpool holds the Guinness Book of Records for being the Capital of Pop - more Liverpool artists have had a number one hit than any other town or city. 56 no 1's to date!
The annual Mathew Street Music Festival held every August Bank Holiday is the largest city centre-based free music festival in Europe.
The annual Thornton Hough Scarecrow Festival was abandoned in 2007 due to its haunting by the ghost of a farmer employed by Lord Leverhulme who was mysteriously murdered when putting scarecrows out in the field.
The film ‘Liverpool Scene’s’ by Lumiere Brothers in 1896 was the first documentary.
Other
There are 3 localities in Bolivia called Liverpool, 2 of which are only 6 km apart
There are two other villages named Everton in England and 16 places in the world share that name
Opened in 1847 and Birkenhead park was the world’s first urban park to be built at public expense, and an inspiration for Central Park in New York
Ness Colliery is where the first steam engines in the region were located.
Britains first animal welfare organisation, the ‘Society for the Suppression of Wanton Cruelty to Brute Animals’, a forerunner of RSPCA, was launched in Liverpool in 1809
The first public baths and wash houses since Roman times were founded in Upper Frederick Street during the cholera epidemic of 1842.
Lewis’s ran the first ever chain of department stores, the first of which opened in Liverpool in 1856
In 1925 the first juvenile court in the country opened in Liverpool.
Liverpool council (one of four councils in Merseyside) has over 20,000 on its payroll, said by some to outnumber the whole workforce employed by the European Union’s ‘bureaucracy’ in Brussels.
History
Bromborough is a main contender for the site of an epic battle in the year 937, the Battle of Brunanburh, which confirmed England as an Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
There is a Yew tree in an Eastham churchyard thought by some to be nearly 2,000 years old
A rectangular floor of sandstone slabs and pebbles dating from approximately 7000 BC. found at Greasby is the earliest known human settlement in Merseyside.
In 1690, William III set sail from Hoylake with a 10,000-strong army to Ireland, where his army was to take part in the Battle of the Boyne.
Archaeological finds suggest that Meols was used as a port as far back as the Iron Age some 2400 years ago, and was once the most important seaport in the northwest of England
Underground cellars and tunnels, which were used to hide cargo pilfered from wrecked ships still exist in Wallasey.
Storeton quarry was mined since the times of the Roman occupation.
The quarry was also the site of the discovery of dinosaur footprints, the species was named Chirotherium Storetonese after the site of discovery
Colonel C.J. Cocks claimed to have fired the first British shot of the 2nd World War from Fort Perch Rock in New Brighton. A shot was fired at an unidentified fishing vessel fifteen minutes after the War had started causing panic to its crew. (Luckily it was identified as friendly in time and allowed to sail into the estuary).
Legend has it that Irish patron saint, St Patrick, blessed a well in Spital during a trip to England.
It is alleged that the nephew of King Arthur resided at Storeton Hall and it is thought that the poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ refers to Storeton Hall.
Some people believe that King Canute actually visited Leasowe in 1016 AD.
Liverpool was not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and such was its lowly state it paid its dues to Walton. Walton was valued at eight old shillings.
Aintree takes its name from a Saxon word meaning lone tree and, and oddly, the ancient trunk of this tree still survives.
Liverpool was granted city status by royal charter only 130 years ago in 1880
The 1st direct postal delivery from Liverpool to Preston was made in 1757.
Places
Birkenhead’s population swelled a thousand fold from just 110 in 1801 to over 110,000 one hundred years later
Upton was the main centre of northern Wirral until the development of Birkenhead in the19th century
On a clear day it is possible to see 16 counties from the top of Billange hill including the Welsh hills and Scotland
Ormskirk lay beneath the waters of a lake until it was drained and turned into farmland in the 18th century.
Southport has the second longest pier in the country.
The Dee Estuary is one of the ten most important estuaries in Europe for the over wintering of wildfowl and waders.
Cheshire
Burton village in the Wirral was ranked eighth overall in a UK market research survey of so-called 'super rich' communities in the Sunday Times Rich List, (with millionaires making up 16% of the population in its postal district)
?Chester was the biggest Roman fortress outside Rome.
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