Globes

The concept of the earth as a sphere has been around for centuries, emerging around the time of Pythagoras in the sixth century BC, and eventually becoming dominant as other thinkers of the ancient world, including Plato and Aristotle, accepted the idea. The first record of an actual globe being made is found in verse, written by the poet Aratus of Soli, who describes a celestial sphere of the stars by Greek astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus (ca. 408–355 BC). The oldest surviving globe—a celestial globe held up by Atlas’s shoulders—dates back to 150 AD, but in the West, globes were not made again for about a thousand years. It was not until the fifteenth century that terrestrial globes gained importance, culminating when German geographer Martin Behaim created what is thought to be the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. In Globes: 400 Years of Exploration, Navigation, and Power, Sylvia Sumira, beginning with Behaim’s globe, offers a authoritative and striking illustrated history of the subsequent four hundred years of globe making. Showcasing the impressive collection of globes held by the British Library, Sumira traces the inception and progression of globes during the period in which they were most widely used—from the late fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century—shedding light on their purpose, function, influence, and manufacture, as well as the cartographers, printers, and instrument makers who created them. She takes readers on a chronological journey around the world to examine a wide variety of globes, from those of the Renaissance that demonstrated a renewed interest in classical thinkers; to those of James Wilson, the first successful commercial globe maker in America; to those mass-produced in Boston and New York beginning in the 1800s. Along the way, Sumira not only details the historical significance of each globe, but also pays special attention to their materials and methods of manufacture and how these evolved over the centuries. A stunning and accessible guide to one of the great tools of human exploration, Globes will appeal to historians, collectors, and anyone who has ever examined this classroom accessory and wondered when, why, and how they came to be made.

From medieval globes made when much of the world was unexplored to the huge, decorative examples made for the princely courts of Renaissance Europe, this book celebrates the art and history of the globe, focusing on the 400 years when the printed globe - as navigational tool, scientific instrument and powerful status symbol - occupied an important place in the history of European exploration.

Supported with code examples and the authors’ real-world experience, this book offers the first guide to engine design and rendering algorithms for virtual globe applications like Google Earth and NASA World Wind. The content is also useful for general graphics and games, especially planet and massive-world engines. With pragmatic advice throughout, it is essential reading for practitioners, researchers, and hobbyists in these areas, and can be used as a text for a special topics course in computer graphics. Topics covered include: Rendering globes, planet-sized terrain, and vector data Multithread resource management Out-of-core algorithms Shader-based renderer design

Advances in modern science and technology have made present-day terrestrial and celestial globes scientifically obsolete and aesthetically banal. From the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century, however, they were indispensable tools for the study of geography and astronomy. Beginning with an overview of early globes, the authors examine how the modern era in globe making, which began in Flemish and Dutch shops in the early seventeenth century, show how globe making spread throughout Europe, and explain how what were both decorative and scientific objects became symbols of power, universal knowledge, intellectual status, and personal vanity. Beginning with the collection's earliest globe, dated 1533, the authors introduce us to the life and works of some of the greatest Dutch, French, English, German, Italian, and Swedish globe makers. The 120 colour illustrations allow the reader to savour these rare and unusual works and include numerous detailed reproductions of both terrestrial and celestial map images. Sphæræ Mundi charts developments and changes over three centuries of globe making, considering the globes as indicators of scientific advance and geographical exploration as well as artifacts and providing a unique opportunity to become familiar with these complex and beautiful objects.

The first volume in Peter Sloterdijk's monumental Spheres trilogy: an investigation of humanity's engagement with intimate spaces. An epic project in both size and purview, Peter Sloterdijk's three-volume, 2,500-page Spheres is the late-twentieth-century bookend to Heidegger's Being and Time. Rejecting the century's predominant philosophical focus on temporality, Sloterdijk, a self-described “student of the air,” reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an inherently spatial and immunological project, from the discovery of self (bubble) to the exploration of world (globe) to the poetics of plurality (foam). Exploring macro- and micro-space from the Greek agora to the contemporary urban apartment, Sloterdijk is able to synthesize, with immense erudition, the spatial theories of Aristotle, René Descartes, Gaston Bachelard, Walter Benjamin, and Georges Bataille into a morphology of shared, or multipolar, dwelling—identifying the question of being as one bound up with the aerial technology of architectonics and anthropogenesis. Sloterdijk describes Bubbles, the first volume of Spheres, as a general theory of the structures that allow couplings—or as the book's original intended subtitle put it, an “archeology of the intimate.” Bubbles includes a wide array of images, not to illustrate Sloterdijk's discourse, but to offer a spatial and visual “parallel narrative” to his exploration of bubbles. Written over the course of a decade, the Spheres trilogy has waited another decade for its much-anticipated English translation from Semiotext(e). Volumes II, Globes, and III, Foam, will be published in the coming seasons.

All it takes is a shake of the wrist to make the flakes fall on Santa’s sleigh, Elvis’s hips, or the Statue of Liberty’s torch--creating a miniature world in each snow globe. From the ornate to the political, from children’s characters to American cities and personalities, these colorful images will propel collectors back to their curio cabinets to watch a dazzling display and set the rest of us out on a lovely nostalgic trip. Each picture comes with a description that gives the history of the piece--going back to the time when snow globes weren’t just tourist souvenirs but depictions of the most romantic sites on earth. Find out where they were first created, which companies specialized in making them, and why they’re so irresistible.

Including everything needed to create your own unique models of our world, this kit features a globe stand and a CD with a variety of map projections that can be printed out on adhesive inkjet paper (included). The projections can be cut and placed on the globe. A 64-page, full-color project book offers comprehensive instructions and information about how maps are made and additional globe-related projects, including how to make origami globes. The book also tells the story of how our world was made and takes you on an entertainig voyage around the planet.