Terrestrial and celestial globes; their history and ... - 24grammata.com

Terrestrial and Celestial Globes.
to have been employed by Orontius Finaeus in his world
map of 1531."'* In this map Mercator departed from the
geographical notions generally entertained at this particular
period which made America an extension of Asia. He represented
the continent of Asia separated from the continent
of America by a narrow sea, an idea which increased in
favor with geographers and cartographers long before actual
discovery proved this to be a fact. This map is one to which
great importance attaches, but it is not the first world map
on which there was an attempt to fasten the name America
upon
both the northern and the southern continents of the
New World, although it frequently
has been referred to as
such ; this honor, so far as we at present know, belongs to a
globe map referred to and briefly
described above, '°
His
large map of Europe, the draughting of which appears to
have claimed much of his time for a number of years, was
published in the year 1554, and contributed greatly
to his
fame as a cartographer,^^ In 1564 appeared his large map
of England,'" and in the same year his map of Lorraine
based upon his own original surveys." In the year 1569 a
master work was issued, this being his nautical chart, "ad
usum navigantium," as he said of it, based upon a new projection
which he had invented,'^ It is the original chart
which is now so ex-
setting forth the Mercator projection
tensively employed in map making. In the year 1578 he
issued his revised edition of the so-called Ptolemy maps, and
eight years later these same maps again, revised with the
complete text of Ptolemy's work on geography. Mercator
expressly stated it to be his purpose, in this last work, not
to revise the text in order to make it conform to the most
recent discoveries and geographical ideas, but the rather
to have a text conforming, as nearly as possible, to Ptolemy's
original work. This edition still ranks as one of the best
which has ever been issued. His great work, usually referred
to as his 'Atlas of Modern Geography,' the first part of
which appeared in 1585, and a second part in 1590, was
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