Posts from — December 2006

An article at Physorg.com answers the question: What does the Library of Congress (LOC) do when it wants to preserve a 500-year-old map, the only known copy of the first world map to call America “America?”

The 1507 Waldseemüller map marks the first time the word “America” was used for well, America. The full map also shows the outline of North and South America, as well as the Isthmus of Panama, and was the first to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean.

The Library has partnered with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to design a hermetically sealed encasement for the 12-sheet 1507 Waldseemüller map, sometimes called “America’s Birth Certificate”.

The Library of Congress acquired Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map in 2003 from the family of Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg of Wolfegg, Germany. The map was drawn by cartographer Martin Waldseemüller and others in St. Dié, France and depicts European geographic discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, including those based on data collected by Amerigo Vespucci during his voyages to America. Vespucci’s explorations, especially along the east coast of South America, convinced him that Columbus’ “Indies” was a new continent. In his map, Waldseemüller named the newly discovered continent “America” in Vespucci’s honor. Later cartographic efforts by Waldseemüller referred to the Western Hemisphere as “Terra Incognita” or “Terra Nova.” Too late—the first name had already caught on.

[tags]antique maps, famous cartographers, historic maps[/tags]

Fly-By History, an article in today’s science and technology section of ABC News online talks about how maps from the David Rumsey antique map collection are being used in Google Earth (see earlier story on this blog.)

The cartographers who authored the maps, according to Rumsey, would likely be “amazed and pleased” with their new use.

[tags]Antique Maps, Google Earth[/tags]

A rare map of the 1806 Red River region of Louisiana by Nicholas King, one of only a few in existence, sold for $34,720USD in an online auction held Nov. 26-Dec. 6 by Old World Auctions of Sedona, Arizona.

The map was created to document part of the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase three years earlier. The expedition was intercepted by the Spanish cavalry, which also laid claim to the region. After a brief battle, the Americans withdrew. Because of the political sensitivity surrounding the encounter with the Spanish, the report of the exploration was kept secret, and explains why only a few of the Red River maps were printed.

Read the full article.

[tags]Antique Maps, Louisiana[/tags]

The antique maps of Ukranian-born Bohdan Krawciw (1904-1975) have been added to Harvard’s map collection. The collection includes around 900 early maps of Europe, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia, the Crimea, and the Black Sea, and represents the major European mapmakers: Mercator, Hondius, Blaeu, Jansson, Pitt, DeWit, Sanson, L’Isle, and Seutter.of maps depicting his homeland.

Michael Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology and director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute notes, “The collection will provide researchers with an intriguing variety of perspectives on how the territory of Ukraine and adjacent areas was viewed and interpreted from without and within its changing boundaries over long stretches of time.”

David Cobb, curator of the Harvard Map Collection notes there will be those who are more interested in the artistic concepts illustrated in some of them, rather than just their cartography. “In a sense,” Cobb says, “a map is a cultural reflection of the people that made it, as well as an aggregate of geographical knowledge.”

The full story can be read in the Havard Library College online news. An exhibition is planned in the spring of 2007.

[tags]antique maps, ukrania maps[/tags]

A continuation of the previously blogged story, part two of The Malta Independent Online’s article The Great Siege and 16th and 17th Century Cartography by Albert Ganada, goes into still more detail of many of the antique maps that depict the seige of Malta:

A close study of the siege maps brings to light several intriguing features, not only topographical and historical, but also iconographic and social, macabre and heroic. They record incidents of the siege unnoticed by historians; they portray hospitals, messes, fishing and bird-trapping, as well as minute details like is-Salib tad-Dejma.

[tags]antique maps, antique map collecting, malta, malta seige[/tags]

The Malta Independent Online has part I of an interesting article about the role played by  cartography during the Great Siege of the tiny island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea in 1565. The siege lasted 3 months, during which time:

The fate of Europe hung in the balance. From day to day, most Christian countries were anxiously awaiting news of the stoic resistance of the Knights of the Order of St John and the people of Malta to the massive, unrelenting onslaughts of the Turkish invaders and the Barbary corsairs who came to offer their support and assistance.

The article goes on to talk about many “news maps” were produced showing the progress of the seige as well as a brief biography of map trader Antonio Lafreri (1512-1577). These maps have gone on to appear in many different atlases and reissues.

[tags]antique maps, antique map collecting, malta[/tags]