Terrestrial and Celestial Globes Volume 2: 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 2: 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
In the matter of geographical record terrestrial globe maps stand with
the plane maps of the same period. While they are by no means as
numerous as the plane maps, there attaches to them an importance no less
historically significant. Not infrequently they give us records not to
be found elsewhere. In their general features, differences can hardly be
said to exist between plane maps and globe maps. In the matter of
adornment there is similarity; each following the practice of the time
when constructed. As pictures and legends hold a place of prominence,
particularly on mediaeval maps,[201] so even to the close of the period
we have had under consideration, that is, the end of the eighteenth
century, these adornments have place on globe maps, sometimes few,
sometimes many, the same, if in picture, exhibiting the inhabitants of
land and sea, if merely a legend, giving information of geographical
importance on the terrestrial globe and of astronomical importance on
the celestial, these legends being often placed in an artistic cartouch.
To the printed or engraved globe map, color was generally added by hand
with an effect often very artistic, in contrast with which the modern
machine methods of color printing are deplorably crude.
On most terrestrial globe maps meridian circles are represented at
intervals of ten, twenty, or thirty degrees, the prime meridian on which
the degrees of latitude are marked being usually made very conspicuous,
and to the close of the period under consideration usually made to pass
through the Cape Verde Islands or the Canaries, a point always to be
carefully noted in attempting to get a reading for the longitude of any
particular place. Parallels are usually drawn at intervals similar to
those of meridians, the equator on which the degrees of longitude are
marked, the tropics, and the polar circles being always conspicuous. The
ecliptic or zodiac is usually indicated encircling the globe from the
solstitial point on the tropics, intersecting the equator at the two
opposite equinoctial points, through which as through the solstitial
points the colures are made to pass.
Hues states that “Those lines which a ship, following the direction of
the Magnetic Needle, describeth on the surface of the Sea, Petrus Nonius
calleth in the Latin Rumbos, borrowing the appellation of his Countrymen
the Portugals; which word, since it is now generally received by learned
writers to express them by, we also will use the same,” that is, rhumbs
or rhumb-lines.
[Illustration: Fig. 137. Portrait of Johann Hevelius (Hevel).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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