The sixteenth century opened with a marvelously increased interest in geography, the result of a climax reached through the transoceanic discoveries in which Columbus led the way. If the makers of plane maps became now increasingly active, so the makers of globes were becoming increasingly numerous, and at first in the countries of trans-alpine Europe. Globes of metal with engraved maps, as the Lenox and the Jagellonicus copper spheres, globes with manuscript maps covering a sphere of special composition, as were those of Schöner, globes in the preparation of which engraved gore maps were employed; as the Waldseemüller, the Boulengier, the Gemma, and the Mercator, make their appearance in ever increasing numbers, the activity encouraged by those interested in a scientific study of geography and astronomy, and notably by seamen, in whose collection of navigator’s instruments they were long considered to be of the greatest importance. How the globe interest in the several countries of Europe found expression during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries is fully set forth in the following pages, with something of an attempt at a grouping and a classification of the results, to the end of making more clear the trend of that interest, now quickened, now retarded, by certain temporary or permanent national impulses. It is especially interesting to note how a certain superiority in globe making exhibited itself, now in one country, now in another, with a lingering favor exhibited in Italy for the manuscript or the metal globe, while in the North, globes with copper engraved gore maps found increasing favor from the first, with a certain climax reached in the Netherlands in the days of Hondius and Blaeu. In the appended tabulated list of globes and globe makers, it will be noted that the makers have been listed alphabetically, that the kind of globe has been indicated, whether terrestrial, celestial or armillary sphere, with the date given, though sometimes only approximately, and with the diameter of each globe recorded in centimeters, so far as obtainable with an acceptable degree of accuracy, fractions thereof being omitted, these same measurements being repeated in the text reference to each individual example or edition.