agslibrary: #MonsterMonday Today’s #MonsterMonday takes us to...

Today’s #MonsterMonday takes us to 1492 and Behaim’s globe. Martin Behaim is now best known for creating what has become the world’s oldest extant globe. The Behaim globe, also called the Erdapfel, was financed by city council members in Nuremberg, and constructed by a team of artists and craftsmen under Behaim’s guidance in 1492. The map drawings were created by George Glockendon according to Behaim’s instructions. Behaim was born in Nuremberg on October 6, 1459 and became a prominent textile merchant and cartographer in Germany. Besides Behaim’s actual contributions to cartography, he was also falsely credited with several other accomplishments after claims made by his biographers and sometimes even himself. For example, Behaim did not actually discover America before Columbus, study with famed mathematician Regiomontanus, or provide a map of the “Southern Sea” to Magellan.

What you see in the post is a globe gore, which one way globes can be made. Each gore is a section that represented a curved part of the Earth’s surface. The AGSL has a 1908 reproduction of the Behaim globe made by George Philip and Sons. It can be found to the right of the President’s globe when you first enter our space.