During the second half of the eighteenth century there is a continued interest in globe construction, yet the period is not one which is at all striking by reason of the good quality of the work done in this field. Since the latter part of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth, when, as has been noted, globes were so generally thought to be an essential part of a seaman’s outfit of navigating instruments, there had been a remarkable improvement in the construction of sailors’ charts resulting from carefully devised methods for the determination of geographical position and the employment of the results in map construction. The plane or sheet chart was again regarded as a more convenient, a more handy guide in navigation than was the globe. If plane chart making had improved so had plane map making. There must, however, have been a considerable popular interest in globes, judging from the number which we know were constructed, and from the number of publications issued which were intended to point out the particular value attaching to globes in geographical and astronomical instruction, to explain their construction, and to indicate the character of the problems which, by their use, could be easily solved. The interest in such objects in this period, perhaps we may say, was rather more extensive than intensive, having more of a popular than of a scientific character. Among the most prominent French map and globe makers of this period were Gilles Robert de Vaugondy (1688-1766) and Didier Robert de Vaugondy (1723-1786), father and son, reference usually being made to these men in geographical literature under the name “Robert” or “Vaugondy.”[160] Gilles, the grandson of Nicolas Sanson,[161] who had achieved first rank among geographers in his day for his maps and atlases, proved himself to be a worthy member of the family. He doubtless owed his earliest enthusiasm for geographical science to an inheritance of the maps, atlases, and other geographical publications of the grandfather, many of which he reissued, adding to the same his own valuable and independent work. Didier seems to have possessed talents none the less brilliant than were those exhibited by the father, and upon him, in succession, the king conferred the title Royal Geographer. In addition to his issue of maps and atlases, the father, often referred to simply as Robert de Vaugondy, became interested in the construction of globes, issuing his first pair, which must have been of small size, in the year 1751, in which work he doubtless was assisted by the son. The king, it appears, being so well pleased with these, directed the construction of others of larger dimensions, and in the same year a pair was issued, each globe having a diameter of about 48 cm.[162] In the same preface[163] it is stated that the king gave orders for a terrestrial globe with map in manuscript, the same to have a diameter of about six feet, and the