We have no definite information as to the circumstances attending Coronelli’s first interest in globe construction. It appears that his first work in this line, a pair of large manuscript globes, opened immediately to him a path to fame, for these had come to adorn the library of the Duke of Parma to whom the French Cardinal, d’Estrées, in the year 1680 had occasion to pay a visit and they immediately won the cardinal’s interest. A pair of such globes, thought he, for so runs the story, would be a source of great delight to His Majesty the French King, Louis XIV. Learning that the construction of still larger globes was altogether possible, but that their removal from Italy to France would be attended with great difficulty, he persuaded Coronelli to accept an invitation to take up a residence in Paris, there to direct the construction of a terrestrial and a celestial globe, sparing neither labor nor expense that they might be worthy of presentation to the Grand Monarch. If Olearius could construct a globe ten feet and more in diameter for Duke Frederick of Holstein, and Weigel one of similar dimensions for the demonstration of his theories, why, thought Coronelli, should I not undertake the preparation of those at least fifteen feet in diameter, which in all the details of globe construction should be made to surpass any that had hitherto been conceived? The author himself has given us the first though brief description of his completed work,[94] and the royal astronomer, La Hire, supplemented this description in his little volume published in the year 1704, when the globes had been placed in the Château Marly.[95] In the author’s own account he alludes to the globes as having been constructed at Paris under his direction, and by order of the Most Eminent Cardinal d’Estrées, for the service of His Most Christian Majesty. Great care was especially exercised in the construction of the machinery designed for the rotation of the spheres, the author being especially proud of the fact that, so delicate was this mechanism, each could be set in motion by a single finger. He further gives us to understand that each sphere was so well fashioned “one could design upon its surface all the degrees in the manner in which a turner designs any circle on a ball without having it removed from the turner’s lathe,” and that the material of which they were constructed was so solid and so well joined that each was able to sustain the weight of thirty men. Each was furnished with a door through which a considerable number of persons might enter at one time, their presence within affecting in no wise the solidity of construction. Each was covered with fine canvas so carefully laid on that none of the joints could be seen, giving a surface smooth as ivory. The meridian and horizon circles were of bronze, the whole being supported by columns which were richly ornamented. In the base, between the four columns supporting the meridian circles, large compasses were