Martin Waldseemüller was a German cartographer and humanist scholar. Sometimes known by the Hellenized form of his name, Hylacomylus, his work was influential among contemporary cartographers. His collaborator Matthias Ringmann and he are credited with the first recorded usage of the word America to name a portion of the New World in honour of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci in a world map they delineated in 1507. Waldseemüller was also the first to map South America as a continent separate from Asia, the first to produce a printed globe, and the first to create a printed wall map of Europe. A set of his maps printed as an appendix to the 1513 edition of Ptolemy's Geography is considered to be the first example of a modern atlas.
Terra Australis was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the Southern Hemisphere. This theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps.
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is considered to be the first true modern atlas. Written by Abraham Ortelius, strongly encouraged by Gillis Hooftman and originally printed on 20 May 1570 in Antwerp, it consisted of a collection of uniform map sheets and supporting text bound to form a book for which copper printing plates were specifically engraved. The Ortelius atlas is sometimes referred to as the summary of sixteenth-century cartography. The publication of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) is often considered as the official beginning of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography.
A mappa mundi is any medieval European map of the world. Such maps range in size and complexity from simple schematic maps 25 millimetres or less across to elaborate wall maps, the largest of which to survive to modern times, the Ebstorf map, was around 3.5 m in diameter. The term derives from the Medieval Latin words mappa and mundus (world).
"Here be dragons" means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potential dangers were thought to exist.
The Dieppe maps are a series of world maps and atlases produced in Dieppe, France, in the 1540s, 1550s, and 1560s. They are large hand-produced works, commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons, including Kings Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England. The Dieppe school of cartographers included Pierre Desceliers, Jean Rotz, Guillaume Le Testu, Guillaume Brouscon and Nicolas Desliens.
Melchisédech or Melchisédec Thévenot was a French author, scientist, traveller, cartographer, orientalist, inventor, and diplomat. He was the inventor of the spirit level and is also famous for his popular posthumously published 1696 book The Art of Swimming, one of the first books on the subject and widely read during the 18th century. Benjamin Franklin, an avid swimmer in his youth, is known to have read it. The book popularized the breaststroke ; he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1990. He also influenced the founding of the Académie Royale des Sciences.
The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity, the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period. The developments of Greek geography during this time, notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in the Roman era, with Ptolemy's world map, which would remain authoritative throughout the Middle Ages. Since Ptolemy, knowledge of the approximate size of the Earth allowed cartographers to estimate the extent of their geographical knowledge, and to indicate parts of the planet known to exist but not yet explored as terra incognita.
The Waldseemüller map or Universalis Cosmographia is a printed wall map of the world by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, originally published in April 1507. It is known as the first map to use the name "America". The name America is placed on South America on the main map. As explained in Cosmographiae Introductio, the name was bestowed in honor of the Italian Amerigo Vespucci.
The Johannes Schöner globes are a series of globes made by Johannes Schöner (1477–1547), the first being made in 1515. Schöner's globes are some of the oldest still in existence. Some of them are said by some authors to show parts of the world that were not yet known to Europeans, such as the Magellan Strait and the Antarctic.
Joan Blaeu, also called Johannes Blaeu, was a Dutch cartographer born in Alkmaar, the son of cartographer Willem Blaeu.
Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world.
Pictorial maps depict a given territory with a more artistic rather than technical style. It is a type of map in contrast to road map, atlas, or topographic map. The cartography can be a sophisticated 3-D perspective landscape or a simple map graphic enlivened with illustrations of buildings, people and animals. They can feature all sorts of varied topics like historical events, legendary figures or local agricultural products and cover anything from an entire continent to a college campus. Drawn by specialized artists and illustrators, pictorial maps are a rich, centuries-old tradition and a diverse art form that ranges from cartoon maps on restaurant placemats to treasured art prints in museums.
The Jagiellonian globe, also known as the Globus Jagellonicus, is a mechanical armillary sphere made in France before 1510. It is an astronomical instrument and a universal clock tracking both local solar time and sidereal time. The central brass sphere is engraved with a map of Earth and contains the clock mechanism. It is the oldest extant globe to use the name America.
The name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning 'southern', and specifically from the hypothetical Terra Australis postulated in pre-modern geography. The name was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders from 1804, and it has been in official use since 1817, replacing "New Holland", an English translation of the Dutch name, first given by Abel Tasman in 1643 as the name for the continent.
Lopo Homem was a 16th-century Portuguese cartographer and cosmographer based in Lisbon and best known for his work on the Miller Atlas.
Regio Patalis is Latin for “the region of Patala”, that is the region around the ancient city of Patala at the mouth of the Indus River in Sindh, Pakistan. The historians of Alexander the Great state that the Indus parted into two branches at the city of Patala before reaching the sea, and the island thus formed was called Patalene, the district of Patala. Alexander constructed a harbour at Patala.
Emanuel Bowen was a Welsh map engraver, who achieved the unique distinction of becoming Royal Mapmaker to both to King George II of Great Britain and Louis XV of France. Bowen was highly regarded by his contemporaries for producing some of the largest, most detailed and most accurate maps of his era. He is known to have worked with most British cartographic figures of the period including John Owen and Herman Moll.
The Mercator world map of 1569 is titled Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata. The title shows that Gerardus Mercator aimed to present contemporary knowledge of the geography of the world and at the same time 'correct' the chart to be more useful to sailors. This 'correction', whereby constant bearing sailing courses on the sphere are mapped to straight lines on the plane map, characterizes the Mercator projection. While the map's geography has been superseded by modern knowledge, its projection proved to be one of the most significant advances in the history of cartography, inspiring the 19th century map historian Adolf Nordenskiöld to write "The master of Rupelmonde stands unsurpassed in the history of cartography since the time of Ptolemy." The projection heralded a new era in the evolution of navigation maps and charts and it is still their basis.
A General Map of the World, or Terraqueous Globe, full title: A General Map of the World, or Terraqueous Globe with all the New Discoveries and Marginal Delineations, Containing the Most Interesting Particulars in the Solar, Starry and Mundane System, is a general map of the world, or terraqueous globe with all the new discoveries and marginal delineations, containing interesting particulars in the solar, starry and mundane system by Samuel Dunn and Thomas Kitchin in 1794. The map features star charts, a map of the Moon, a map of the Solar System, and numerous other features along with maps of both hemispheres of the Earth. Samuel Dunn's map is large and includes much detail, and is challenging to fully describe it in small photographs or text.
