Terrestrial and Celestial Globes Volume 1: Their History and Construction Including a Consideration of their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and AstronomyStevenson, Edward Luther
History
Terrestrial and Celestial Globes Volume 1: Their History and Construction Including a Consideration of their Value as Aids in the Study of Geography and Astronomy
Stevenson, Edward Luther
Geography -- History; Globes
Of the first edition, other than those gores to be found in the New
York Public Library, a set of the terrestrial and the celestial gores is
in the British Museum, and of the terrestrial in the Germanisches
Nationalmuseum of Nürnberg.
Of the second edition, copies of the unmounted gores may be found in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, in the British Museum, in the private library of
Prince Trivulzio of Milan. A mounted pair of the second edition may be
found in the Osservatorio Astronomico of Rome (Fig. 65), and in addition
a second example of the celestial globe, which is described as having
excellent mountings of brass, so arranged as to make possible a
revolution of the globe both on an equatorial axis and an axis of the
ecliptic. Its horizon circle is supported by two brass semicircles, the
whole resting on four wooden columns of modern construction, and these
in turn resting on representations of lion’s paws in bronze. An example
of the mounted terrestrial globe is said to belong to the collection of
Sr. Bazolle of Belluno, which example once belonged to the Counts of
Pilloni.
[Illustration: Fig. 65. Globes of François de Mongenet, 1560, and of
Gian Francesco Costa, 1784.]
Attention has been called to the peculiar gore map of Santa Cruz,[295]
and to the fact that his method of construction seems not to have won
favor. We, however, find among the map makers of Italy, in the period of
which we are now speaking, one Antonius Florianus,[296] who, if not
copying the plan of Santa Cruz, followed closely his scheme. His map, of
which numerous copies are known (Fig. 66), seems to have been prepared
for mounting on a ball, although no such mounted example can now be
located. With the poles as centers, and with a radius equal to one
quarter of the circumference of the sphere he proposed to construct, he
drew his equatorial circles, which thus gave him two hemispheres,
respectively, a northern and a southern; in the same manner he drew his
parallels at intervals of ten degrees, using for each the common polar
centers. In each of the hemispheres he drew thirty-six sectors, each
sector being made to represent ten degrees of longitude, and they were
so shaped mathematically that their combined width at the equator
would equal the circumference of the sphere of which the selected
radius, referred to above, represented one quarter of that
circumference. When prepared for mounting, the vacant space between the
several sectors could be cut away, leaving the thirty-six engraved
sectors, on which the world map appeared, to be pasted on the surface of
the sphere. The scheme which Florianus devised was practically that
employed by Werner in his equivalent cordiform projection, and likewise
that of Finaeus and Mercator.[297]
[Illustration: Fig. 66. Globe Gores of Antonius Florianus, 1555.]
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