Description - The Naming of America by John W. Hessler
This new book features the first sheet-by-sheet fascimile of the 1507 World Map by Martin Waldseemuller - one of the most important maps in the history of cartography and the firat map ever to display the name America. It tells the fascinating story behind the map's creation in 16th century France and rediscovery 300 years later in the library of Wolfegg Castle, Germany, in 1901. It also includes a completely new translation and commentary to Martin Walseemuler and Matthias Ringmann's seminal cartographic text, the Cosmographiae Introductio by Martin Waldseemuler (ca. 1470-ca. 1521) and Matthias Ringmann (1482-1511) was printed in two editions in 1507 in the small town of St. Die in northeastern France, under the patronage of Duke Rene II of Lorraine. Its importance stems from the mention on its title-page of two maps that appear to have originally been part of the book. One of these, described in Latin as in plano, is Martin Waldseemuler's famous 1507 World Map. It represents the cintinents of North and South America with a shape similar to those we would recognize today, separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean. the other map, called in solido, was a printed globe gore that is thought to be the first of its kind. Together the 1507 World map and the Cosmographiae Introductio occupy a crucial place in history, between the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 and the birth of scientific revolution with Copernicus in 1543.<< In his introduction, John Hessler summarises the current state of knowledge on Waldseemuller and his collaborators and cinsiders answers to some of the key questions raised by the map's representation of the New World, including "How was a small a group of cartographers able to produce a view of the world so radical for its time and so close to the one we recognize today?", and "What evidence did they have to show the existance of the Pacific Ocean when neither Vasco Nunez be Balboa nor Ferdinand Magellan had yet reached it?" In posing answers to these - and other - questions, Hessler affords us a glimpse into an age when accepted scientific and geographic principles fell away, spawning the birth of modernity. AUTHOR: John W. Hessler is a member od the Colle ction Management Team of the Geography and Map Division at The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. He has published extensively on the history of mathematical and planetary cartography and is the author of several well known articles relating to the Waldseemuller map corpus. His current research focuses on the study of geometrical and axiomatic methods in Ptolemy's cartographic and astronomical works, especially the Mathematica Syntaxis. 45 colour illustrations
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