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No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her. – Comedy of Errors (III.2) Celestial Globe with clockwork, Gerhard Emmoser (fl. 1556–1584) | Austrian, Vienna, Metropolitan Museum of Art | Public Domain | Source Celestial Globe, after 1621, by Willem Jansz Blaeu | Metropolitan Museum of Art | Source Terrestrial and Celestial Globes The first terrestrial and celestial globe made in England happened during Shakespeare’s lifetime, being published in 1592. Although he is thought to have never drawn or illustrated the world on paper, Herodotus is credited with being the father of Greek cartography because his details were so accurate and complex that when he described the world, it is possible to create a physical map from his descriptions. This globe is known as the Behaim Globe and it is believed to be the oldest surviving Globe, having been made by Martin Behaim in 1492. Design: Martin Behaim (1459-1507), painting: Georg Glockendon the Elder. (d. 1514) | Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg | The image is from the Germanisches National Museum.This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. | Source The first English printed Globe was made by Molyneux, mathematician and instrument makers, making compasses and hourglasses (used on ships) he moved in other mathematician circles, and new explorers like Drake and Raleigh and John Davis, and he was introduced to a London merchant named Sanderson, who decided to fund the making of a pair of globes to promote English maritime enterprise. Spent lots of money, about 1000lbs, over 100,000lbs in today’s currency, with the help of many other people and well publicized at the time, presented to Elizabeth I , dedicated to her, and shows how importance. Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost lead! – Henry IV Part II (II.4) This drawing of the world was published in 1508, and based on maps from 1492. It is called The Lenox Globe, by B.F. De Costa. | This map helps explain why Columbus thought he could set sail from Europe and end up in India. That's why he called the native people Indians when he landed in San Salvador. Based on the information available to him at the time, there was no North America and he thought he had landed in India the way the map suggests.| Photo by Kattigara |This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.| Source Mapping the Continents, including (or leaving out) North America North America is known as the “New World” and we think of it as having been discovered by Christian Europe in the late 1400s. Would some of the spherical globes available to collectors in Shakespeare’s lifetime have included the New World on those maps? (If there are other locations or attributes that are conspicuously omitted, or included, that make surviving globes datable to the 16th century due to specific geographic inaccuracies unique to this time period, please share about...
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