Globe

A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body,

or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps,
but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray
except to scale it down. A model globe of Earth is called a
terrestrial globe. A model globe of the celestial sphere is called a
celestial globe.

A globe shows details of its subject. A terrestrial globe shows

landmasses and water bodies. It might show nations and major
cities and the network of latitude and longitude lines. Some have
raised relief to show mountains and other large landforms. A
celestial globe shows notable stars, and may also show positions of
other prominent astronomical objects. Typically, it will also divide
the celestial sphere into constellations.

The word globe comes from the Latin word globus, meaning
"sphere". Globes have a long history. The first known mention of a
globe is from Strabo, describing the Globe of Crates from about
150 BC. The oldest surviving terrestrial globe is the Erdapfel, made Contemporary terrestrial globe of
by Martin Behaim in 1492. The oldest surviving celestial globe sits Earth
atop the Farnese Atlas, carved in the 2nd century Roman Empire.

Terrestrial and planetary

Flat maps are created using a map projection that inevitably
introduces an increasing amount of distortion the larger the area that
the map shows. A globe is the only representation of the Earth that
does not distort either the shape or the size of large features – land
masses, bodies of water, etc.

The Earth's circumference is quite close to 40  million metres.[1][2]

Many globes are made with a circumference of one metre, so they Students and teacher looking at a
terrestrial globe of the earth.
are models of the Earth at a scale of 1:40 million. In imperial units,
many globes are made with a diameter of one foot (about 30 cm),
yielding a circumference of 3.14 feet (about 96 cm) and a scale of
1:42 million. Globes are also made in many other sizes.

Some globes have surface texture showing topography or bathymetry. In these, elevations and depressions
are purposely exaggerated, as they otherwise would be hardly visible. For example, one manufacturer
produces a three dimensional raised relief globe with a 64  cm (25  in) diameter (equivalent to a 200  cm
circumference, or approximately a scale of 1:20  million) showing the highest mountains as over 2.5  cm
(1 in) tall, which is about 57 times higher than the correct scale of Mount Everest.[3][4]

Most modern globes are also imprinted with parallels and meridians, so that one can tell the approximate
coordinates of a specific location. Globes may also show the boundaries of countries and their names.
Many terrestrial globes have one celestial feature marked on them: a diagram called the analemma, which
shows the apparent motion of the Sun in the sky during a year.

Globes generally show north at the top, but many globes allow the axis to be swiveled so that southern
portions can be viewed conveniently. This capability also permits exploring the Earth from different
orientations to help counter the north-up bias caused by conventional map presentation.

Celestial
Celestial globes show the apparent positions of the stars in the sky.
They omit the Sun, Moon and planets because the positions of these
bodies vary relative to those of the stars, but the ecliptic, along
which the Sun moves, is indicated. In their most basic form celestial
globes represent the stars as if the viewer were looking down upon
the sky as a globe that surrounds the earth.

History Trainer using a celestial sphere to

show student a point used to see the
The sphericity of the Earth was apparent path the sun takes through
established by Greek the stars.
astronomy in the 3rd century
BC, and the earliest terrestrial
globe appeared from that period. The
earliest known example is the one
constructed by Crates of Mallus in
Cilicia (now Çukurova in modern-day
Turkey), in the mid-2nd century BC.

No terrestrial globes from Antiquity

The Globe of Crates of Mallus
have survived. An example of a
(c. 150 BC) as imagined by a
surviving celestial globe is part of a
20th century artist
Hellenistic sculpture, called the
Farnese Atlas, surviving in a 2nd-
century AD Roman copy in the Naples
Archaeological Museum, Italy.[5] The "Erdapfel" of Martin
Beheim is the oldest
Early terrestrial globes depicting the entirety of the Old World were surviving terrestrial globe,
constructed in the Islamic world.[6][7] During the Middle Ages in Christian made between 1491 and
Europe, while there are writings alluding to the idea that the earth was 1493.
spherical, no known attempts at making a globe took place before the
fifteenth century.[8] The earliest extant terrestrial globe was made in 1492
by Martin Behaim (1459–1537) with help from the painter Georg Glockendon.[5] Behaim was a German
mapmaker, navigator, and merchant. Working in Nuremberg, Germany, he called his globe the "Nürnberg
Terrestrial Globe." It is now known as the Erdapfel. Before constructing the globe, Behaim had traveled
extensively. He sojourned in Lisbon from 1480, developing commercial interests and mingling with
explorers and scientists. He began to construct his globe after his return to Nürnberg in 1490.

China made many mapping advancements such as sophisticated land surveys and the invention of the
magnetic compass. However, no record of terrestrial globes in China exists until a globe was introduced by
the Persian astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, in 1276.[9]
Another early globe, the Hunt–Lenox Globe, ca. 1510, is thought to be the source of the phrase Hic Sunt
Dracones, or “Here be dragons”. A similar grapefruit-sized globe made from two halves of an ostrich egg
was found in 2012 and is believed to date from 1504. It may be the oldest globe to show the New World.
Stefaan Missine, who analyzed the globe for the Washington Map Society journal Portolan, said it was
“part of an important European collection for decades.”[10] After a year of research in which he consulted
many experts, Missine concluded the Hunt–Lenox Globe was a copper cast of the egg globe.[10]

A facsimile globe showing America was made by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507. Another "remarkably
modern-looking" terrestrial globe of the Earth was constructed by Taqi al-Din at the Constantinople
observatory of Taqi ad-Din during the 1570s.[11]

The world's first seamless celestial globe was built by Mughal scientists under the patronage of Jahangir.[12]

Globus IMP, electro-mechanical devices including five-inch globes have been used in Soviet and Russian
spacecraft from 1961 to 2002 as navigation instruments. In 2001, the TMA version of the Soyuz spacecraft
replaced this instrument with a digital map.[13]

Manufacture
Traditionally, globes were manufactured by gluing a printed
paper map onto a sphere, often made from wood.

The most common type has long, thin gores (strips) of paper that
narrow to a point at the poles,[14] small disks cover over the
inevitable irregularities at these points. The more gores there are,
the less stretching and crumpling is required to make the paper
map fit the sphere. This method of globe making was illustrated
in 1802 in an engraving in The English Encyclopedia by George
Kearsley.
A short, 1955 Dutch film showing the
Modern globes are often made from thermoplastic. Flat, plastic traditional manufacture of globes using
paper gores
disks are printed with a distorted map of one of the Earth's
hemispheres. This is placed in a machine which molds the disk
into a hemispherical shape. The hemisphere is united with its
opposite counterpart to form a complete globe.

Usually a globe is mounted so that its rotation axis is 23.5° (0.41 rad) from vertical, which is the angle the
Earth's rotation axis deviates from perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. This mounting makes it easy to
visualize how seasons change.

In the 1800s small pocket globes (less than 3 inches) were status symbols for gentlemen and educational
toys for rich children.[15]

Examples
Sorted in decreasing sizes:

The Unisphere in Flushing Meadows, New York, at the Billie Jean King USTA Tennis
Center, at 37 m (120 ft) in diameter, is the world's largest geographical globe. This
corresponds to a scale of about 1:350 000. (There are larger spherical structures, such as
the Cinesphere in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, but this does not have geographical or
astronomical markings.)
 Eartha, currently the world's largest rotating globe with a diameter
of 12 m (41 ft), located at the DeLorme headquarters in Yarmouth,
Maine. This corresponds to a scale of about 1:1.1 million. Eartha
was constructed in 1998.
The Mapparium, three-story, stained glass globe at the Mary Baker
Eddy Library in Boston, which visitors walk through its diameter via
a 9.1 m (30 ft) glass bridge. This corresponds to a scale of about
1:1.4 million.
The Babson globe in Wellesley, Massachusetts, a 7.9 m (26 ft)
diameter globe which originally rotated on its axis and on its base
to simulate day and night and the seasons. This corresponds to a
scale of about 1:1.6 million.
The giant 3.7 m (12 ft) diameter globe in the lobby of The News
Eartha, the largest
Building in New York City, corresponding to a scale of about
rotating globe
1:3.5 million. The globe weighs approximately 1,800 kg (4,000 lb)
and makes a full rotation every ten minutes, thus rotating 144 times
faster than the actual planet.[16]

Images

A 1716 pocket terrestrial Top view of a 1765 globe. Mechanised

globe with celestial globe 1594 celestial
case. globe.

Detail of a 1586 19th century map of Mars in flat

mechanised celestial printed gores, to be wrapped around
globe. a globe.
 Exhibit with multiple globes of The Unisphere, Example of Globe of the
the earth, each conveying the largest an Armillary Moon.
various information. geographical sphere.
globe.

Globe used as a decorative ca.1504 Ostrich Egg Farnese Atlas,

architectural element. Globe. ancient Roman
sculpture of
Atlas holding
up a celestial
globe.

Cartoon of globe
anthropomorphized
as human.

See also
Maps portal

World portal
 Analemma
Armillary sphere
Cartography
Dymaxion map
Earth in culture
Ellen Eliza Fitz
Emery Molyneux
Globus Jagellonicus
Hunt–Lenox Globe
Johannes Schöner globe
Orrery
Planetarium
Science On a Sphere
Virtual globe
Voskhod Spacecraft "Globus" IMP navigation instrument
Ibrahim ibn Said al-Sahli

References
1. The Earth’s circumference is 40 million m because the metre was originally defined to be
one 10-millionth of the distance between the poles and the equator.
2. Arc length#Arcs of great circles on the Earth
3. MapScaping på Twitter: "3D topographic globe at Stanford's Branner Library." (https://twitter.c
om/MapScaping/status/1094493425095856128)
4. The GEO One 25" Extreme Raised Relief Classroom Floor Globe (https://www.1worldglobe
s.com/1WorldGlobes/classroom_relief_globe.htm)
5. Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003.
6. Medieval Islamic Civilization By Josef W. Meri, Jere L Bacharach, pages 138–139 (https://bo
oks.google.com/books?id=H-k9oc9xsuAC&pg=PA138)
7. Covington, Richard (2007), "The Third Dimension" (https://web.archive.org/web/2008051202
2044/http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200703/the.third.dimension.htm), Saudi
Aramco World, May–June 2007: 17–21, archived from the original (http://www.saudiaramcow
orld.com/issue/200703/the.third.dimension.htm) on 2008-05-12, retrieved 2008-07-06
8. David Woodward (1989), "The Image of the Spherical Earth", Perspecta, MIT Press, 25: 3–
15 [9], doi:10.2307/1567135 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1567135), JSTOR 1567135 (https://
www.jstor.org/stable/1567135)
9. David Woodward (1989), "The Image of the Spherical Earth", Perspecta, MIT Press, 25: 3–
15 [9], doi:10.2307/1567135 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1567135), JSTOR 1567135 (https://
www.jstor.org/stable/1567135)
10. Kim, Meeri (2018-01-27). "Oldest globe to depict the New World may have been discovered"
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oldest-globe-to-depict-the-new-wo
rld-may-have-been-discovered/2013/08/19/503b2b4a-06b4-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.
html). Washington Post.
11. Soucek, Svat (1994), "Piri Reis and Ottoman Discovery of the Great Discoveries", Studia
Islamica, Maisonneuve & Larose, 79 (79): 121–142 [123 & 134–6], doi:10.2307/1595839 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.2307%2F1595839), JSTOR 1595839 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1595839)
12. Society, National Geographic (2011-01-21). "globe" (http://www.nationalgeographic.org/ency
clopedia/globe/). National Geographic Society. Retrieved 2017-01-23.
13. Tiapchenko, Yurii. "Information Display Systems for Russian Spacecraft: An Overview" (htt
p://web.mit.edu/slava/space/essays/essay-tiapchenko1.htm). Computing in the Soviet Space
Program (Translation from Russian: Slava Gerovitch).
14. "Image: globe.jpg, (450 × 100 px)" (http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/globe.jpg).
netpbm.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2015-09-01.
15. Bliss, Laura (13 October 2014). "These tiny glass globes were all the rage in London 200
years ago" (http://qz.com/280392/these-tiny-glass-globes-were-all-the-rage-in-london-200-ye
ars-ago/). Quartz (publication). Retrieved 2014-10-14.
16. A Visit To The Daily Planet | Scouting NY (http://www.scoutingny.com/a-visit-to-the-daily-plan
et/)

External links
ppmglobe – generate strips to glue onto a sphere (http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/ppmglo
be.html)
Behind the scenes at London's globe-making workshop – a photo essay (https://www.thegua
rdian.com/travel/2017/aug/18/maps-legends-behind-the-scenes-london-globe-maker-worksh
op-bellerby) (August 2017), The Guardian

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