Globe Making in the 1950s

The first globes were made beginning in 1492. These were made by hand and hand painted. Even in the 1950's making a globe was a labor intensive process. Watch this video to see how the globes were made.

Related reading: Our World Maps Are Distorted; Urbano Monte: Renaissance Map Maker; New World Map the Most Accurate

Our World Maps are Distorted

Did you know that the world maps we use are distorted? Watch this video.

Urbano Monte, Renaissance Map Maker

Urbano Monte (1544-1613) was an Italian nobleman who lived in Milan. He produced the map shown above. He copied many of the images from earlier map makers, but he also innovated. In a treatise he wrote for his followers, Monte apologized for his poor drawing skills.


When he was 41, Monte took up cartography and created this world map, replete with mythical creatures, including sea monsters, unicorns and centaurs. Three editions of this map survive today — one at Stanford and two in Italy.

An intensive examination of the Stanford map revealed that Monte was quite the imitator, copying mythical monsters from other world maps, Van Duzer said. For instance, Monte copied an odd-looking turtle bird, a sea monster and a scroll from a map published nearly 30 years earlier by the Italian Michele Tramezzino.

Monte implemented some unorthodox practices. Namely, he left instructions that the 60-page map be arranged like a giant poster and rotated around a pivot point as a 2D disc. Also, he drew the map from the perspective of a bird's-eye view of the North Pole. 

Read more here.

Related reading: Why the Maps You See Are Wrong; How Globes Were Made in the 1950s; A Brief History of Globe Making

New World Map the Most Accurate

The Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa claims to have resolved the centuries-old problem of how to draw an oblate spheroid Earth on a flat plane. This is the map of the world that Narukawa produced. It looks very different from the version produced by Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century. Mercator devised a map with straight lines of longitude and latitude which helped in sea navigation.

AuthaGraph World Map

Unlike the traditional Mercator map, which overstates the size of Greenland and Europe and minimizes that of Africa and South America, the AuthaGraph World Map retains parity of area to a 3D projection.

Go here to read how Narukawa achieved this more realistic map of the world. 

Related reading: How Globes Were Made in the 1950's; A Brief History of Globe Making

The World Map Without Distortions

The maps we have become accustomed to are based on a map first produced in the 1600s. These maps are not accurate in their representations of the comparative square miles of the different regions. For example, Europe is shown as being larger in size than South America. Yet Europe is 3.8 million square miles whereas South America is 6.9 Square miles.

Another example is a comparison of the land masses above and below the equator. The regions above the equator are shown as larger, yet the regions below the equator cover 38.6 square miles, whereas the regions above the equator cover only 18.9 square miles.

Watch this video to see what the map of the world should look like.

Related:  Why the Maps You See Are Wrong; Renaissance Mapmaker Was a Mastermind and a Copycat; How Globes Were Made in the 1950s; A Brief History of Globe Making

Old Maps and Globes

Map making is called cartography.

Many peoples have shown interest in the earth and the relationship of continents and territories, including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans. The Stoic philosopher, Crates of Mallus, fabricated a globe around the year 150 BC. Crates' globe is very interesting because he speculated that there must be a land mass where North America is located. He thought this must be so because he believed that the earth's balance required symmetry. In other words, the part of the world that he knew about required the existence of a counterpart on the other side of the globe.

The oldest surviving terrestrial globe was made in 1492 by the German mapmaker Martin Behaim (1459–1537). He had the globe painted by Georg Glockendon. Behaim's globe is known as the Nürnberg Terrestrial Globe or the Erdapfel (German - "earth apple").

The year 1492 was an important year in Western history. Columbus discovered the West Indies, and King Fernando and Queen Isabela united Spain for the first time. Soon after, Spain began to explore the Americas and founded colonial cities in Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Florida, and South America. 

Behaim's depiction of the world was not inaccurate, especially in relation to the west coast of Africa and North America, about which he knew nothing. His globe is in the collection of the German National Museum in Nürnberg.

Related reading: A Brief History of Globe Making: Urbano Monte: Renaissance Map Maker; Why The Maps You See Are Wrong